"A" for "Azulejo"

It's quite telling that one can write a whole article about Moorish contributions to Portugal without ever mentioning the most famous and, arguably, the most significant of them - colored tiles known in Portuguese as "azulejos". While law and religion, agriculture and language are important from a day-to-day, practical point of view, to "help fuel the European Renaissance" would take a breakthrough into the spiritual domain - and that means philosophy, music and visual art. For most countries, the latter is associated with sculpture and painting but Portuguese visual art is almost completely synonymous with "azulejos". 

Glazed coloured tiles are everywhere in Portugal, from concert halls

to train stations,

shop signs

and random houses

Considering such omnipresence, it's hardly surprising that a place actually designated for tiles, the National Tile Museum in Lisbon, looks and feels like a palace - a three-story building with galleries, balconies and an inner courtyard/garden with a fountain (on the cover picture). The riches it displays are worthy of a palace, too. Apart from a small, yet very comprehensive, exhibition on the 1st floor devoted to the craft of making tiles, the museum is a three-dimensional encyclopedia of Portuguese life. In other words, rather than telling the story of "azulejos", it tells a story of everything else in Portugal through "azulejos".

In a riot of colours, tiles of all shades and hues create a graphic map of Lisbon

illustrate bucolics

delve into the noble mythology of the past

or the evil philosophy of the present

There are tiles that seemingly have no topic but their interplay of light and colours still takes one's breath away

A 19-century writer believed that beauty would save the world. While that hope might be far-fetched, "azulejos"' beauty did prove its ability to build bridges and forge alliances. Several galleries in the Tile Museum tell a compelling story of Dutch and Flemish artists, themselves accomplished tile-makers, who were so impressed by their Portuguese colleagues that they came half-across the continent and asked to be trained in those new ways. Initially, the main distinction between the two schools was the  set of colours each of them used, climate and geography playing a major part in the choices. However, after a while, a new style emerged because both schools were constantly enriching each other. As a result, warm southern colours mixed with cooler northern ones, and when it comes to modern tiles, it takes a trained professional to determine which school they belong to. A unique project occupying a wing on the top floor of the museum partially illustrates the endpoint of that artistic cooperation.

The project was created by one of the most prominent Portuguese tile artists of the 20th century, Querubim Lapa. It was called simply "The Kitchen", its purpose being to teach ordinary people how to use "azulejos" for decorating their own kitchens. So, in 1989, Lapa chose a random apartment and turned its kitchen into a work of art, while promoting it countrywide. The artist must have drawn his inspiration from Ovidius' poem "Metamorphoses" because every character in his kitchen universe is somewhat of a shape-shifter. As one critic put it, "everybody eats and is being eaten at the same time!".