O Café Rialto e as suas histórias (Café Rialto and its stories) was the title of a roundtable that took place on May 29th at Clube Millennium BCP in Porto. The bank’s social club currently occupies part of the space of what once was Café Rialto, for which Dordio Gomes created in 1944 two of the frescoes under study in the Mural in Motion Project.
Guest speakers Laura Rodrigues, Renato Soeiro and Júlio Gago shared their memories of this much cherished hub of Porto’s social and cultural life, and a place of resistance to the Estado Novo regime, until its closure in 1972. In a lively discussion moderated by project researchers, the three guest speakers and members of the audience brought home the vulnerability to market forces of artistic and architectural heritage located in privately-owned property, and called for greater public efforts for its preservation.
