Museu do Fado, Lisbon

I love everything connected to Fado, and in this museum, you can go through the history of this unesco protected Portuguese gem! There was a room in which you can sit and listen to historical records of Fado songs and performers arranged in alphabetical order where I was for the majority of my time in museum. Beautiful museum.

A very basic museum about fado. Mostly deals with the feeling of fado, without going in depth into the style or the artist. Still, if you're interested in some sort of musical history, check it out. It's not expensive. The biggest part is about the singing, and the element of soul to it. There's some attention to the Portuguese guitar and regular guitar ("viola"). Live music would spruce the place up, but that might have just been because I went on a weekday out of season.

We went to a restaurant to listen to Fado music. I should have gone to the museum first and fulfilled my Fado craving there. It would have saved me 100 euros. We paid 5 euros each to listen to a variety of renowned Fadistas, listen to history associated with Fado, and to appreciate some of the instruments and artifacts of the earlier Fado days. You can't get that at the dinner show. The view of Alfama from the museum is classic and the location is centralized to the birthplace of Fado. If you have time, offer them a visit. They make the information accessible in a variety of languages through prerecordings. It's worth the trip.

A Fado Museum, right in the front yard of the traditional Alfama neighborhood. It's a small museum that provides a good overall perspective on fado for the non specialist. The visit is done with an audioguide, and exhibits show numbers which connect with sound and voice explanations. This way, the visitor can decide how thorough he wants the visit to be: check all the available fadista's biographies or just of some? Listen to all the historical notes, or just a few? Ignore all audio explanations and just skim the visuals of the exhibition? The museum tries to go beyond the musical aspect of fado, with paintings, media and other cultural expressions as means to understand the phenomenon. It is aimed at the general public (or tourist) and not to a more specialized crowd. There is no musicology, nor analysis of the music form through time, nor a decomposition of its characteristics, nor of its recent influences, where it comes from and where it is going to. But it does document a broad intuitive picture of the cultural value of Fado. It doesn't promote the advancement of the understanding of fado, but it does help to frame the mindset of those new arrivals and who have not much of an idea of what fado is. The museum is housed in a former water elevatory station, from the 19c. It was renewed into the actual museum by architects Santa-Rita in 1998. The interior architecture is of a post-modern style typical of the duo of architects, with the use of strong colors, play on spacial distortions and an unsettling fragmentation of forms, in an anxious search for drama (which sometimes gets exhausting). Where a corridor is particularly narrow, the visitor is thrown against a big window opening up to the Alfama neighborhood, as if the neighborhood was part of the exhibition - which could be, as so much of fado is rooted to it. There is a (almost) secret room. And the auditorium seems to be suspended over the space. Columns are oblique. The circulation might be a bit confusing, but distribution is simple: the top floor has the permanent exhibition and auditorium, the basement the temporary exhibitions, ground floor has services, souvenir shop, etc. Restaurant and school develops on a side wing. Tickets can be bought at the entrance. Wheelchair accessible. Efficient and friendly staff. Backpacks must be stored in the cloakroom. Photography without flash only.

Interesting museum dedicated to Portuguese fado music and culture. We took our time and spent about an hour in the museum and small gift shop. It's a convenient starting point for going uphill through Alfama to castelo do Sao Jorge if you're up for the winding climb.