The Jewish museum in Alfama opens doors in 2017 – Diário de Notícias – Lisbon

History of the jews in Portugal will be told in a new building that will be born in the Largo of São Miguel. The project involves an investment of around five million euros

“we Have a duty of memory to our jewish background.” These are the words of the minister of Culture, Luís Filipe Castro Mendes, yesterday, in a ceremony that formalized the launch of the new Jewish Museum of the city. The project, which will entail an investment of five million euros, will be ready in the next year. To tell “no reservations,” the history of the jews in Portugal, has assured the president of the municipality, Fernando Medina.

The memory of that journey will be told in the new building that will rise on the Largo de São Miguel in Alfama. Of the authorship of the architect Grace Bachmann, you have two separate bodies, a first similar to the built typical residential neighborhood, a second with a face, already differentiated, in the stone limestone and with a frieze in low relief that draws the Star of David (and that goes for the lateral façade, on rua de São Miguel). To the DN, Grace Bachmann says that the big challenge was the “integration” of the project with the surrounding, strongly marked by the Church of san Miguel (property of public interest), right there the two steps. The solution was to make a “continuation of the housing, since this is a neighborhood primarily housing”, and then a ” facade “with a coating that is one of the symbols of Lisbon [the stone lioz], which is also the stone of the church”. On the inside, a carpeted semienterrado will have a multipurpose room, reception and shop. The floors above will work in open space, and the museum space itself. On the top floor there is a terrace with a cafeteria.

Esther Mucznik, former vice president of the jewish Community of Lisbon and responsible for the plan, the museum explains that the museum will have a first space with an exhibition of objects and images of the religious culture and the jewish (which will be donated by the community) and will go after the route of the jews in Portugal. “Accentuating the positive sides and contributions of the jewish community” to the country, he said yesterday, but let’s not leave forgotten periods the more obscure – read-the expulsion and persecution of jews. An aspect also underlined by Fernando Medina, president of the local authority: “The presence of the jewish community in Portugal, in addition to millennial, is made up of periods of light and periods of black. The museum must be able to tell this story in that she had bright and dark”.

Speaking at the signing ceremony of the protocols between the various entities involved in the project, the Medina, classified yesterday as “historic”, the beginning of the end in the realisation of “an old ambition” of the local authority. Already as to the costs, the mayor of Lisbon, pointed to a “total investment of five million euros” in the first phase “of construction and operation”. A value that will be supported in large measure by the Fund of Development of Tourism of Lisbon (the so-called tourist tax) and by a grant from the Foundation Lina and Patrick Drahi (the owner of Altice, a French company that is owner of Portugal Telecom) in the amount of about 1,2 million euros – according to Medina, one of the largest financial contributions of a donor private to a project in the capital. Present yesterday at the signing of the protocols, Drahi said that his family’s history connects to the history of Portugal – “At the end of the FIFTEENTH century the families Drahi, Sicsu and Amoyal left Lisbon and the Algarve. These regions my ancestors, expelled, followed the road south and settled in North Africa”.

The jewish community will give the collection to the Museum, which will be managed by the Association of Tourism of Lisbon. The ATL is with the rights of the surface, for a minimum period of 50 years, on the ground where will be built the museum, a space that had until now three buildings of a city and a room, property of a private, which the city has already acquired. When the DN Fernando Alves Costa, the owner , says he will deliver the keys at the end of this month, but it is very little satisfied with the business: “it Was very poorly paid. He was here a income, a coffee and two rented houses, they gave me 100 thousand euros and a shop in Telheiras”.