The Islamic hall
Carpets, Iznik and Mamluk glass as summits.
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Taras Rynza from Moscow, Russia — CC BY-SA 2.0 · bm.iphone — CC BY 2.0 · muffinn from Worcester, UK — CC BY 2.0
An Istanbul Armenian who engineered Iraq's oil deals, took his famous five percent and became his era's richest man — fleeing Europe's war (1942), neutral Lisbon sheltered his last years, so he willed it collection and foundation: Iberia's largest charity to this day. His museum is a whole city's returned favour.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
The Gulbenkian is Europe's purest private collection: Calouste Gulbenkian — the Armenian Mr. Five Percent of Iraq's oil — gathered with blazing taste six thousand unmixed summits, only the finest of everything, and willed them to the Lisbon that sheltered him; a modernist campus (1969) rose for them in a garden counted Portugal's finest modern architecture. The eastern wing is a treasure belonging especially to Arab and Muslim visitors: Persian and Ottoman carpets among the greatest preserved, Iznik ceramics in full blue, manuscripts and gilded Mamluk glass — among all Europe's noblest Islamic-art rooms — then Egypt, Greece, Rembrandt, Rubens and Turner, closing in the René Lalique hall: the jeweller-friend's glass and ornament in a collection without planetary second. The garden around is a forest of pockets, ponds and ducks worth its own free hour — Lisbon's mid-town green refuge.
Carpets, Iznik and Mamluk glass as summits.
The artist's jewels without planetary second.
Ponds, ducks and 1969's poetic concrete.
Avenida de Berna 45, 1067-001 Lisbon