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The twelve-year span separating the destruction by fire of the Real Teatro de São João (1908) from the opening of the new Teatro de São João (1920) meant a golden opportunity which the other theatres in Porto quickly seized. All of them carried out improvement works, competing among themselves to temporarily occupy the position of the only “first-rate theatre” in the city. Among them was Teatro Carlos Alberto. It had been named after a Sardinian king who died an exile in Porto, in 1849, where he lived at the Mansion of the Baron of Valado, in the gardens of which the theatre was built by initiative of Manuel da Silva Neves.

Ever since its opening, in October 1897, its vocation had been to present popular spectacles: from circus shows to operettas, light plays and films. In the late 1970s, when it had been almost exclusively reduced to showing films, the Secretariat of State of Culture rented it.

The newly-named Auditório Nacional Carlos Alberto opened its doors in September 1980, and began hosting more diversified programs, in a career that would come to an end in March 2000. As Porto’s turn as European Capital of Culture approached, the building was purchased by the event’s organisers, Sociedade Porto 2001. To maintain the building’s symbolic value while bringing its traditional use up to date were the challenges met by architect Nuno Lacerda Lopes’ project.

After a complicated process of advances and recoils, the renewed Teatro Carlos Alberto was finally returned to the city in September 2003.