Art and Architecture

The Royal College of Arts was provisionally established in the buildings of the Colleges of St. Michael and All Saints, located on Sofia Street and belonging to the Santa Cruz Monastery, and it started to operate in 1548. In 1549, works to adapt the Santa Cruz colleges began under the supervision of Diogo de Castilho.

In 1555, the college corporation was placed in the custody of the Society of Jesus, who handed the building over to the Inquisition in 1566. In 1571, the building underwent works of remodelling to adapt it to its new purposes.

After the termination of the Court of the Inquisition in 1821, the building was occupied by public services, by the theatre group “A Escola da Noite” and by some residential units.

In the 1950s, sections of the former College of Arts were demolished, but the main courtyard and other areas remained untouched, and were rehabilitated by the architect João Mendes Ribeiro, in order to establish there the Centre for Visual Arts, which was inaugurated in 2003.