Restaurants and Cafés

Founded in 1778 under the name Café da Neve (Snow Café), it then sold sorbets that in that period were famous across the city. In 1829, after a number of owners, it was sold to Martinho Bartolomeu Rodrigues, with the café soon becoming popularly known by the name of its new owner. Leading figures in Portuguese intellectual life were regulars with the café achieving its greatest fame due to the great universal poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). In the café, he wrote the "Message", the only book he was to see published in his lifetime. The table where Pessoa would normally sit seems to be awaiting his return. On the walls, photographs reveal moments from the poet´s life in the Lisbon of the 30s. Another "reserved" table belongs to José Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.