We dedicate this page to the "Lisbon story" of the building, what we know from the books of past papers, what we have found and photographed and what we have already planned to build, a flashback from the 21st century to the 18th century...
Now and for the next years...
We want to create a unique feeling of immediate friendship, this complicity linked by invisible strings but sustainable and long lasting relationships..
It has already started.
Estelle Valente was born near Paris in France, Gisela João in Barcelos, in the north of Portugal some years later.
Estelle once discovered Gisela singing in a bar of Alfama, in the heart of one of the oldest "bairro" of Lisbon, between the Tagus and Sao Jorge Castle, in the old jewish ghetto. Too shy to say hello, she used her camera, revealing Gisela's fado soul in the pictures she took...
I met Gisela at a friend's party, in honor of Ana Teresa de Keersmaeker as Artist of the City 2012... When Gisela started to sing, and despite her fragile aspect, her voice was from deep inside her soul, a butterfly with a lion voice...
It only needed to arrive, the moment the singer meets the photographer, the moment two fado lovers, speaking the same language, talk their own partition.
The building, Travessa André Valente 21, lived this magic moment ...
credit: Estelle Valente - picture taken in the Duchess lounge at Travessa André Valente 21 - Lisbon
Recent times ...
At the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century, the building was intensively modified with the purpose of ennobling it. A fronton was designed on its top and a Duchess lived on the 3rd floor. Frescos of delicate pink roses and stuccos painted by hand.
Old times ...
The building was on the limits of Santa Catarina´s Convent area and Marques de Pombal Palace
