Royal Portuguese Reading Room

The Real Gabinete Portugues de Leitura was founded in 1837 by Portuguese immigrants in Rio and moved into this building, completed in 1887, designed in the neo-Manueline style - the revival of the late gothic Portuguese manner of the age of discoveries, with twisted rope mouldings, maritime motifs and a limestone facade cut in Lisbon and shipped over. The reading hall inside is the point: three galleries of carved jacaranda shelving rising to a stained glass skylight, packed with books to the ceiling. The collection runs to several hundred thousand volumes and is the largest body of Portuguese literature outside Portugal, including rare sixteenth-century printings. It is a working library rather than a museum, so the hall is small, quiet and full of people reading.

History

The institution was founded in 1837 by forty-three Portuguese immigrants, political refugees, as the first association of their community in the imperial capital. Its building, designed by the Portuguese architect Rafael da Silva e Castro in the Neo-Manueline style, with a facade inspired by the Jerónimos Monastery and carved in Lisbon by Germano José Salle, was begun when Pedro II laid the first stone on 10 June 1880 and opened by Princess Isabel and the Count of Eu on 10 September 1887; open to the public since 1900, its library holds 350,000 volumes, among them a first edition of Camões's Os Lusíadas of 1572 (Wikipedia, Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading).

Highlights

• A neo-Manueline facade - limestone cut in Lisbon and shipped to Rio.
• Three galleries of carved jacaranda - shelving rising to a stained glass skylight.
• The largest Portuguese collection outside Portugal - several hundred thousand volumes.
• A working reading room - in use, not arranged for display.

When to go

All year, weekdays only. An hour, and often much less.

What to expect

Only the one hall is open to visitors and the visit takes minutes; queues form at busy times and numbers inside are limited. Silence is enforced and photography is restricted. It closes at weekends and on Portuguese and Brazilian holidays.

Nearby

The Theatro Municipal is a short walk; the Sao Bento monastery is north.

Key facts