A combination of luthier workshop, instrument shop, exhibition space and small concert hall, Casa da Guitarra sits on Avenida Vimara Peres a short walk from the cathedral square in central Porto, near the upper deck of the Luis I Bridge. The project was founded in 2012 by luthier and Portuguese guitar player Alfredo Teixeira with the aim of preserving the wider family of Portuguese stringed instruments, and the fado concert programme grew out of weekly acoustic shows that started attracting larger and larger audiences. The performance space inside the shop seats roughly forty in a single room arranged around the small stage, and concerts run daily at 18:00 and 19:30 with additional 21:00 sets on Fridays and Saturdays. Each show lasts about an hour and follows the traditional fado format of two singers accompanied by a Portuguese guitar and a viola de fado. The repertoire is fado tradicional rather than the tourist friendly fado cancao of larger venues, with regular tributes to historical figures of the Porto and Lisbon fado scenes. Singers rotate through a roster of working professional fadistas based in northern Portugal. The wider venue also functions as an active luthier workshop, with Alfredo Teixeira repairing and building Portuguese guitars, violas braguesas, mandolins and other regional chordophones on site, and the permanent exhibition along one wall traces the history of these instruments through detailed wood specimens and finished examples. A second fado experience, Fado Vitoria, runs from the Sao Bento da Vitoria monastery and combines a guided tour with a concert under the same Casa da Guitarra programming. Concerts are typically 18 to 25 euros, with a wine option available on entry. The location at the south-eastern edge of the Se cathedral square places the venue directly above the head of the Avenida da Ponte road that runs down to the upper deck of the Luis I Bridge, with the rear of the building looking across the Douro to the Vila Nova de Gaia bank. The Portuguese guitar itself, an evolution of the older European cittern, is the principal stringed instrument of the wider Portuguese musical tradition and a defining sound of fado, particularly in the higher-pitched twelve-string variant used in the Coimbra style. The Casa da Guitarra runs occasional public workshops covering both the playing of the Portuguese guitar and the wider history of these instruments, with material drawn from the on-site permanent exhibition that traces the evolution of the cordofones from the medieval period through the nineteenth century instrument workshops of the wider Porto region.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: Avenida Vimara Peres 49, Porto, Portugal

Telephone: +351 222 010 033

Website: https://casadaguitarra.pt

Opening Date: 01/01/2012