Open House Lisboa offers free access to 77 food supply spaces this weekend

Open House Lisboa explores food supply

This Saturday and Sunday, Open House Lisboa will offer free entry to 77 sites involved in supplying food to the Portuguese capital, from production through to retail, including some that are "out of the public eye".

The 15th edition of this Lisbon Architecture Triennale initiative is themed "Architecture and food". Curated by historian Anísio Franco and architect Mariana Sanchez Salvador, it brings together visits to "countless important places that were, or still are, vital to supplying food products to Lisbon’s population", according to the organisers.

Covering production, distribution, preparation and sales, this year’s programme will give visitors access to kitchens, including some historic ones, warehouses, shops, waste-management sites, restaurants, markets and community gardens that influence the city’s everyday life and urban planning.

Food-related spaces open to visitors

Among the locations included are Adega Belém, the Águas Livres Aqueduct – Water Museum, Armazéns Abel Pereira da Fonseca, the Júlio Pomar Studio-Museum – a converted former warehouse – Auto Palace supermarket, the Food Bank, Browers Beato brewery, the University City canteen and Cervejaria Trindade.

Visitors will also be able to see the kitchens and dining rooms of historic sites, including the Convent of the Trinas of Mocambo, now home to the Hydrographic Institute, and the Convent of São Domingos, converted into the Convent Square Lisbon Hotel, as well as the convents of Beato and Cardeaes.

The programme also includes the kitchen at the São Bento Social Support Centre, the Mouraria community kitchen, Galeto, the Alvalade Community Greenhouse, Martinho da Arcada and the Pastéis de Belém Factory. These venues were selected to demonstrate that "historically, food was central to the founding of cities and their prosperity", the organisers stressed when presenting the event on 29 April.

Additional Open House Lisboa activities

Aimed at promoting the capital’s architectural heritage, the initiative will additionally feature a Junior Programme, the Plus Programme, the Sound Walks Collection, Accessible Visits and five specialist-led guided urban routes.

Asked by Lusa at the time about visitor numbers for the previous two editions, the organisation said it had recorded 18,369 visitors in 2025 and 24,421 in 2024, describing them as "overall figures that vary greatly according to the limited entry capacity of the sites involved in each edition".

Created by Victoria Thornton in 1992, the Open House Worldwide network now operates in more than 60 cities around the world, including Porto, London, Osaka, Thessaloniki, Zagreb and Buenos Aires.

In Lisbon, Open House has taken place annually since 2012, jointly organised by the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, chaired by architect José Mateus, and Empresa de Gestão de Equipamentos e Animação Cultural/Lisboa Cultura.