The Clubs of Lisbon
Having previously looked at the clubs of Paris and Washington D.C., I thought it might be worth looking at the capital city of one of my favourite countries, Portugal.
Lisbon has its own ‘Clubland’, consisting of four clubs, each located within two blocks of one another, in the city’s historic centre, a ten-minute walk from the Praça do Comércio on the harbour front. Two of them are mixed-sex literary clubs, and two of them are aristocratic “gentlemen’s clubs”.
Upstairs Salon of the Grémio Literário. (Photo credit: TripAdvisor.)
The oldest and largest of Lisbon’s clubs is the Grémio Literário (“literary guild”), dating to 1846. It occupies a vast mansion, including multiple salons and drawing rooms, as well as club staples such as the bar, dining room and library. It reminds me in layout of London’s Savile Club, with its beaux-art architecture and capacious gardens. It offers a striking cross between English and Portuguese architectural styles. The Club numbers some 1,200 members, who share an interest in the arts.
The bar of the Grémio Literário. (Picture credit: Grémio Literário website.)
Lisbon’s other literary club is the Circulo Eça de Queiroz, founded in 1940, and named in honour of one of Portugal’s foremost novelists. It has a much smaller membership, limited to 202 members (something reflected in the ironwork of an inner door in the lobby, which is fashioned into a “202” pattern), in homage to Eça de Queiróz’s novel 202 Champs-Elysées, set in the eponymous address. Its closest London counterpart is probably the Athenæum, with the concentration on the library as the centre of club life - indeed, it is impossible to access the bulk of the clubhouse (including the dining room and function rooms) without first threading through the main library. The clubhouse appears deceptively small from the outside, but is quite capacious within, spanning three floors.
The ballroom of the Circulo Eça de Queiroz.
The better-known of Lisbon’s two aristocratic “gentlemen’s clubs” is its Turf Club, founded in 1883. As the name suggests, it is themed around racehorse owners, although it is closer in atmosphere to Paris’ Jockey Club than to its London namesake. Its members went on to create the Portuguese Equestrian Federation in 1927. Today, there are around 330 members, with at least 50 members needing to participate in a ballot to elect a new member, making it a close-knit group. It occupies a suite of first-floor rooms, including various salons, dining rooms, a drawing room, a gaming room, a billiard room, a library, and a garden.
The Drawing Room of the Turf Club. (Picture credit: Turf Club brochure.)
Even more discreet is the Real Clube Tauromáquico (literally “Royal club for bullfighting enthusiasts”) set up in 1892, limited to 123 members. It occupies three floors of a building opposite the Turf Club, and has a range of salons and dining rooms, with the paintings and scultpures heavily themed around bullfighting. Bullfighters themselves are not elligible for membership, but members do have to demonstrate an interest in, and knowledge of, bullfighting. It only reciprocates with three clubs in the world, each of them with strong bullfighting connections.
(The Sala de Espera of the Real Clube Tauromáquico. Picture credit: e-chiado.pt)
Each of the clubs named above has a strong dining culture, with high attendance around both lunchtime and dinner on weekdays. Meals tend to be hearty, inexpensive, and sourced from local ingredients. Diners congregate around one big club table, or else dine alone. Each of the above clubs also possesses private dining rooms in addition to the main dining room.
Lisbon, with its strong maritime tradition, also has several nautical institutions further out from the city centre, dotted along the coast, including the Associação Naval de Lisboa , a yachting club set up in 1856, and the Clube Naval de Lisboa founded in 1892, as well as the nearby Clube Naval de Cascais dating to 1938.
None of the Portuguese clubs possesses bedrooms - like the clubs of Spain, there is very little tradition of providing overnight accommodation, since members tend to be drawn from the immediate surrounding province, coming into town for the day. Accordingly, the Portuguese clubs are often overlooked on reciprocal lists in the Anglosphere, since many UK and US clubs have a policy of only reciprocating with establishments that can accommodate their members. It is their loss; Portugal contains some real gems.
