Located at Praça do Império in Lisbon, the Belém Cultural Center was designed in 1988 by the architects Vittorio Gregotti and Manuel Salgado, with the aim, on the one hand, of hosting the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union scheduled for the first half of 1992, and, on the other, of providing the capital with a new cultural facility capable of fostering artistic creation and dissemination.1
Comprising three main modules—the Conference Centre, the Exhibition Centre, and the Performing Arts Centre—the complex adopted a foundation model in 1991 (initially as the Fundação das Descobertas, and later, from 1999 onwards, as the CCB Foundation).2
The venue opened to the public on 21 March 1993, and since then its musical programming—centred on the three halls of the Performing Arts Centre—has combined in-house productions and co-productions (notably its frequent collaboration with the opera and symphonic seasons of the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos), as well as initiatives proposed by private promoters, encompassing a wide range of genres (concerts, opera, dance, cinema, theatre, performance, jazz, fado, and popular music).3
In addition, the activities developed by the Congress and Meetings Centre, as well as by the Exhibition Centre—which currently houses the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Architecture Centre—further reinforce its cultural role. Together, these institutions hold the most significant collection, in the national context, of works created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.4
Frequented by a highly diverse audience, the Belém Cultural Center quickly established itself as one of the central institutions of cultural life in Lisbon and in Portugal as a whole.
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