When we are walking along a city landscape, we often admire its old buildings, isn't it? We're walking past and our minds are thinking "Woah, 200 years ago this building was already here. I'm walking someone's steps and seeing what they must have seen". If you're visiting Lisbon, and depending on the time of the year, you're either thinking that or cursing the decision to walk instead of getting a tram. There's a reason it's called the City of Seven Hells Hills, after all (really, don't come for a walk in Lisbon without comfortable shoes).
This assumption is only natural, since the idea that is sold to us upon a visit to certain locations is their nearly timeless existence. But that isn't usually that linear. One of my favourite hobbies is to try and figure out how things actually were (yes, I am the life of the party). More often than not, what you are looking at is nothing like what your ancestors would have seen if they'd visited the very same place. It's natural. Look at your own house: how many items are in the same place as they used to be ten years ago? My own bedroom has been changed so many times that future alien archaeology will struggle to identify it with its old pictures. What I'm bringing to you today is a small part of Lisbon's past, not the visible past - the one that you can see while you walk by - but that past that is only alive in old imagery, books and memoirs. I'm bringing you the Hotel Francfort. There are loads of Portuguese blogs talking about the Hotel Francfort and giving you a little bit of its History. They all agree on the basic data: that this hotel was founded by António José da Silva and his wife, Joaquina Pereira da Silva, in 1867; that they owned a firm; and that the following year this hotel was moved to a different location, occupying the same building as one of the famous Marrare cafés (more on that later). In 1906, you could see two different hotels, the Hotel Francfort and the Francfort Hotel, belonging to two brothers, Arthur da Silva and João Narciso da Silva, the latter being proprietor of the one close to the Santa Justa Elevator (INFO from the Restos de Colecção BLOG). Back to the Marrare. As you see, the Hotel Francfort started its official life in the second half of the 19th century, and went on into the 20th. However, its existence, or, better yet, that of the building, started way before. I'm translating this for you, because I know that not too many people speak Portuguese, and I find the opportunity to share this delightful. «At the Street of the Arco da Bandeira, where nowadays is the dinning room of the Francfort, it still existed, and that, since the earliest moments of the century, the Marrare of the seven doors - one of the four cafés that were founded then in Lisbon by the napolitan António Marrare. Watched by the Police in the first few years of its existence, as the francophile ideas of its regulars were known, it was later a favourite centre of the partidarians of the Vintismo. In the mid of the century, already owned by Manuel António Peres, the Spanish Manuel, the Marrare of the seven doors was the first café downtown. Palmeirim, at Excentrics of my time, reminds us of its existence as a famous botequim: «One would play billiards amongst artists, there was plenty of betting, and people would take their coffee, before the theatre, the Epifânio and the Tasso. At night you had a real supper, and Domingos, the household manager, would open credit to the fancy dandies that asked for it and never paid him back.» (Revista Municipal de Lisboa, Ano 14, n.º 56, 1º trimestre de 1953. Os cafés da Lisboa romântica, por Ferreira de Andrade.) So the story starts long before. Part of the building was a café, This café belonged to an Italian named Antonio Marrara, known in Portugal as Marrare, who owned several establishments in Lisbon during the 19th century. This man came from Calabria to Lisbon in the late 18th century and served the Marquis of Nisa, and after a short stay in Brazil, he returns to Lisbon in the year 1800 and begins his career as entrepreneur (Carsinno 2015, 197-198). The Marrare cafés were interesting centres. You can still find old advertising for them in Portuguese newspapers of the time: in 1830, he announced in the Gazeta de Lisboa (Num. 137, 12th June) that one of his stores, at the Portas de Santa Catharina Street, number 25, from 5 o'clock in the afternoon onwards, would start selling hand-made snow and accept orders for ice-cream and jam, as long as they were done in opportune times; later, in 1830 (number 141, 17th June), the same café would start selling "carapinhada" from 11 a.m. onwards. As the hotel Francfort (and its twin, the Francfort Hotel, at the central square D. Pedro IV) grows, the memories of the Marrare cafés will slowly fade. When Portugal enters the 20th century and the years of Salazarism, it's still there: it is described in the memoirs of Humberto Delgado, for instance. He dined there, and the PIDE, the security agency of the Estado Novo, was there waiting for him. Those were the 60s, not that long ago at all. And yet, if you cross that street today, you don't see the Hotel Francfort anymore. It's so close in time that we can almost see it; if our grandparents visited Lisbon, they'd remember it. But if not for historical records, we'd know nothing of it, and even less that it was born from the Italian cafés of Marrara. I still know little about that transition, and even less of what existed in that building before Marrara founded the café. But one thing is certain: the feeling that you and I have while walking that street, the vibe, has got to be completely different from the one there used to be sixty years ago, when you had one of those old-fashioned hotels with a restaurant at the ground floor and what is now considered vintage decoration but was all the hype back then. And after all this, I'm sitting here and cannot help but wonder where are the beds, the lamps, the armoirs that existed in the Hotel Francfort, who were the people that worked there, where are the records of those who rented a room, were there little children running along the halls, what sounds, which scents, what was the essence of this hotel of times gone by? A bit of Bibliography Revista Municipal de Lisboa, Ano 14, n.º 56, 1º trimestre de 1953. Os cafés da Lisboa romântica, por Ferreira de Andrade. Carmine Cassino's thesis, 2015: https://repositorio.ul.pt/bitstream/10451/23962/1/ulsd072775_td_Carmine_Cassino.pdf Gazeta de Lisboa, several issues: https://books.google.pt/books?id=qewvAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA572&lpg=PA572&dq=antonio+marrare&source=bl&ots=XCfsavmWmZ&sig=ACfU3U0LetRRawdIRXYeoFcpFE5SvoUhIw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiV5Lj4he_lAhUtAWMBHdE7B444ChDoATALegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=antonio%20marrare&f=false Humberto Delgado's Memoirs: https://books.google.pt/books?id=uBkOAQAAIAAJ&q=hotel+francfort+santa+justa&dq=hotel+francfort+santa+justa&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUj-qZ_O7lAhVLOBoKHVZeASU4ChDoAQg8MAI
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |