Catarina, 33 years old, opens the door of her small house in Vila Travessa Paulo Jorge, in Belém, and greets her neighbour across the street, “dona Rosa”, with a smile, who returns the gesture. Catarina has been living in this village since the pandemic, in a house that she says is 150 euros “below current market prices” – she chooses not to mention the exact value. She also mentions she’s not the only young person living there. This is how she informs us about a new phenomenon in Lisbon: the old workers’ villages, home to many elderly in the city, have also become home to many young people.
“The neighbours here all know each other. There are older people and there is a younger couple over there.” But what attracts them here?
It could be an isolated phenomenon, but this generational mix already occurs in some other villages in the city – some private, others municipal. With houses becoming vacant and the housing crisis affecting the entire city of Lisbon, many young people end up finding residence in these hidden places.
However, in another part of Lisbon, in Vila Luz, in Arroios, the arrival of the younger generation seems not to have been instigated by low prices: when young Isabel discovered that her family owned Vila Luz, she didn’t hesitate to move there and gradually brought friends and more friends of friends.
Vila Travessa Paulo Jorge, in Belém, and Vila Luz, in Arroios, like many other villages in Lisbon, were built between the late 19th and early 20th centuries to accommodate the population arriving in Lisbon from rural areas.
As was the case with “dona Luísa”, Isabel’s neighbour. She’s 84 years old and has been living here since she was 17. “I came to Lisbon alone, I was tired of working in the fields”, she recalls. About the past of this once quiet place, she only says that much has changed. “It used to be just old people here, now it’s just me.”
Today, Isabel, the young neighbour, mentions that “as the older people passed away, the young ones started to appear”.
“Community Spirit”: what they find in the villages
In some cases, living in these villages means finding homes with rents slightly below market rates. In others, the lack of supply in the rest of the city ends up pushing them towards the villages, some of which are already affected by real estate speculation.
Young Mafalda found a two-bedroom apartment within market prices in Vila Mendonça, in Arroios, which she shares with her boyfriend. Faced with the housing crisis in Lisbon, she felt that she found a good opportunity here.
“At this moment, people don’t specifically choose to come to a village; people need a home, housing is lacking.”
Even though it’s not a choice, as Mafalda says, she recognizes the importance of the sense of community that exists here. “I think it’s nice to live here; it provides a different interaction among neighbours, we are outside more often, and there’s more contact.” And Catarina, in Travessa Paulo Jorge, says the same: “Before, I lived in a building in Santa Apolónia, I didn’t know my neighbours.”
This was an idea that was already echoed in 1996 when, in an RTP program about courtyards and villages of Lisbon, architect José Manuel Fernandes stated:
“This aspect of a secluded and sheltered life, somewhat removed from the direct street experience, will have its future. It will have a dimension of the future, I don’t know if positive or negative. But when we think about urban condominiums, new condominiums, the issue of fortified spaces, protected from the outside, the idea of the village, of the segregated courtyard, segregated in a good sense because it protects from the harmful effects of current urban life, is a topic in perfect recovery and learning.”
Catarina, who lives in a private house in Vila Travessa Paulo Jorge, points out that the house is quite small and that she would probably have left there already if it weren’t for that added value: the sense of community.
“This house benefits from street life. When I enter here, it feels like I’m no longer in Lisbon. It ends up maintaining a culture of a lively village.”
If Paula Silva, who works in a rubber manufacturing warehouse in the village where she grew up, Vila Paulo, in Arroios, says that the sense of community never returned, in Vila Luz, Isilda and Manuel speak with great joy of the young people who now live there: “We have no reason to complain about the younger ones who now live here, they are very well-spoken!” says the couple.
For Beatriz Marques, a 20-year-old Theater student, this sense of community is something she doesn’t want to give up, and to which she is more than accustomed: she lives and has always lived in Vila Amélia Gomes, in Beato, a forgotten treasure in the city of Lisbon. “I like living here”, she says.
In Vila Luz, in Arroios, the younger generation also seeks this sense of community: “In the past, there was a great community here; the older ones say that they even used to dance around the bonfire!” shares Isabel. “But it’s hard to live in a community when the space is occupied by cars”, Isabel says. A scenario that repeats itself in other villages.
What will happen to the municipal villages?
To facilitate access to housing and breathe new life into the city’s villages, in 2017, the Lisbon City Council announced the rehabilitation of nine out of the 34 municipal courtyards and villages. This measure included the rehabilitation of vacant houses to attract affordable rentals for the younger population.
Of these nine villages, the Lisbon City Council says that two rehabilitations have been completed: in Vila Bela Vista, in Beato, and in Largo do Marquês de Angeja, in Belém.
According to information from the Lisbon City Council, in Largo Marquês de Angeja, out of the six rehabilitated housing units, two were assigned to applicants aged between 30 and 35 years old, and others are awaiting assignment in competitions.
During a visit to Vila Bela Vista, Maria José Oliveira, who has lived there for 30 years, mentions that in the village there are both young people and older individuals.
In both municipal villages, the maximum rent values are fixed: T0 apartments range from 150 to 400 euros, T1 apartments from 150 to 500 euros, T2 apartments from 150 to 600 euros, and T3 apartments from 200 to 800 euros.
Meanwhile, the Lisbon City Council foresees further interventions: the renovation work in Vila Romão da Silva, in Campolide, is already underway. The bidding process is underway for Vila Elvira, also in Campolide. In the project phase are Travessa Paulo Jorge, in Belém, Pátio do Paulino, in Alcântara, Pátio do Beirão, in Marvila, and Pátio dos Bastos, in Estrela.
In addition to these, in Vila Macieira, which was demolished several years ago in São Vicente, the construction of 71 housing units is under study under the Lisbon First Housing Cooperatives Program.
The past of Lisbon’s villages and courtyards
In the 1996 RTP documentary about the villages and courtyards of Lisbon, architect Nuno Teotónio Pereira described these ensembles as “the hidden face” of the city and, for many Lisbon residents, they continue to be just that.
But there is a story behind them.
Just as today, 100 years ago, the city of Lisbon was going through a severe housing crisis. Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Industrial Revolution had driven rural exodus, leading populations to seek opportunities in major urban centers. This phenomenon was also motivated by administrative and socio-economic reforms of the so-called Regeneration era (the period of constitutional monarchy in Portugal), which envisaged the abolition of the entail system and the development of transportation and telecommunications.
The result: a significant population growth.
“There was no housing for families, the shortage was felt even more urgently than it is today”, explains Gonçalo Antunes, a researcher who has studied the history of the courtyards and villages of Lisbon, identifying 696 courtyards and 402 workers’ villages in the city in the 19th century.
In this context, additional floors were added to existing houses (attic spaces and mansard roofs emerged), and courtyards were created, a type of precarious housing that corresponded to an uncovered enclosure inside a building – and which spread mainly in the city center, in areas like Alfama and Mouraria.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Survey of Lisbon’s Courtyards identified more than two thousand houses in these courtyards, where more than 10 thousand inhabitants lived.
“That survey stated that the conditions in the courtyards were horrendous”, says Gonçalo Antunes. “The entire population lived in enormous precariousness that severely affected health.”
Improvements in housing would eventually be carried out not by the state but by private developers, small civil construction builders, and industrial owners, who created workers’ villages concentrated in the city’s expanding areas, along two major industrial axes: in the Alcântara Valley and in the eastern zone, in the parishes of Marvila and Beato.
Many factory workers would come to live in these villages. Despite their housing conditions being better than those of the courtyards, they were still precarious places, many of them lacking access to clean water, basic sanitation, and electricity.
“With the expansion of the northern railway line, which began to traverse both parishes [Marvila and Beato] from 1856 onwards, these areas definitively became prominent locations for industrial settlement and large commercial warehouses, with a special prevalence of cotton fabric manufacturing, tobacco processing, cork transformation, milling, tanning, and wine trade.”
Margarida Reis e Silva, “Courtyards and villages of Marvila and Beato: ways of life of an ancient movement”
Over time, villages destined for the lower middle class would also emerge, such as Vila Berta in Graça or Vila Luz Pereira in Mouraria.
But the future of the villages would be dictated in 1930 when their construction was prohibited by municipal regulations. Three years later, the Affordable Housing program was launched, through which neighbourhoods of affordable housing were built according to the model of single-family homes with gardens, for which the Estado Novo regime would become known.
The villages awaiting a future
They ceased to be built from the 1930s onwards, but they continued to exist and buzz with life. It was with the end of the industry that their existence changed, and their degradation accelerated…
In the 1980s, the “Study of Courtyards and Villages of Lisbon” was published, providing guidelines for safeguarding some courtyards and villages. In the following decade, the Courtyards and Villages Office was created by the Lisbon City Council, under the Municipal Directorate of Urban Rehabilitation, and the “Detailed Plan and Safeguarding: Courtyards and Villages” was drawn up.
Over the years, some courtyards and villages have been rehabilitated, and some have even been transformed into luxury segments, as was the case with Pátio Bagatella, near Amoreiras.
However, some ensembles disappeared. Like Vila Macieira in São Vicente, which, being at risk of collapse, was demolished in 2015 – here the possibility of constructing a cooperative is being discussed.
Many other villages have been forgotten. A paradigmatic example of this is Vila Dias, a set of visibly degraded houses, where residents have been awaiting a solution for years.
In 2020, faced with the purchase of the village by private individuals, the Lisbon City Council contested the sale, arguing that it had not had the opportunity to exercise its right of preemption. After two years of struggle, the municipality and the owners reached an agreement, with the City Council purchasing the village for 3.8 million. The Lisbon City Council stated to Mensagem that the village is awaiting the development of the project.
Clotilde, who has been living there for 60 years, vents: “There are many elderly people here, we’re waiting for renovations, they say this place is going to collapse, I don’t know if it will or if it won’t. The houses are more or less, they are small, if I didn’t fix mine, it would fall apart. Other than that, we’re managing.”
The place to live and work: memories of courtyards and villages
For many, the spirit of the villages has faded over the years. Paula Silva, from Vila Paulo in Arroios, reminisces about that life.
Vila Paulo is renowned as a village of trades, where work and residence were once intertwined. It was where her grandmother settled in the early 20th century, having arrived from Santa Comba Dão. The house she lived in passed down from parents to children, and from children to grandchildren.
“When I was little, there were chickens here, people came with the rural experience, it was almost all family”, Paula Silva recounts.
The work “Courtyards and Villages of Marvila and Beato: Ways of Life of an Ancient Movement” by Margarida Reis e Silva seeks to trace the past of some of these hidden places, where people lived with a strong sense of community: for example, it was in the courtyard of the village that women gathered to wash and dry clothes and to do sewing repairs.
All that has changed, says Paula. “Of course, the new residents are nothing like the old ones, there’s no socializing”, says the longtime resident. There, she says, older people live alongside some young couples.
Isilda and Manuel, she from Pampilhosa da Serra and he from Alcobaça, came to Lisbon while still young and met in Arroios, where they have lived ever since, in Vila Luz. Despite the “dark and old house” where they raised their two children, they recall the past life of the village with great enthusiasm: “We used to have Saint Anthony parties with dancing! Everyone knew each other.”
That life, they say, has faded away. “The old folks passed away…”.
Today, many of the municipal houses are now vacant, awaiting intervention from the Lisbon City Council – in the same response to Mensagem.
“These villages have great potential to be rehabilitated and transformed into very pleasant housing complexes, quite different from what we see in most of the city”, says researcher Gonçalo Antunes.
Ana da Cunha
Nasceu no Porto, há 28 anos, mas desde 2019 que faz do Alfa Pendular a sua casa. Em Lisboa, descobriu o amor às histórias, ouvindo-as e contando-as na Avenida de Berna, na Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
✉ ana.cunha@amensagem.pt
If you like what you’ve seen us doing, if you get inspired by our stories, if you care about a new Lisbon, more engaging and liveable, if you see any use in this journalism, communitarian and close spare a little bit of your time and consider donating. If you want to be part of this community – join us!