“Fifty years after the renovation of the artistic décor of A Brasileira do Chiado, the café and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) get together to tell a vibrant part of the neighbourhood’s history — a history that left its mark on Portuguese art and confirmed Almeida Garrett’s theory that coffee is the key to understanding a country’s identity. George Steiner once wrote that Europe is the continent of cafés. I would like to point out that Europe is also the continent of museums, a fact that is confirmed in 2021 by the meeting of these two centres of artistic culture in Chiado.” Emília Ferreira, MNAC Director.