With the name Vila Nova de Andrade, Bairro Alto appears in the beginning of the XVI century, in sequence to a group of some steps took by the King D. Manuel and by the Lisbon Council Senate. These steps aimed, above all, the control of the chaos that was installed in Lisbon in the Discoveries époque, with a ennobled capital image that the king wanted.
Constructed to substitute the pombalino building that blazed in 1864. Domingos Parente da Silva was the developer this ambitious French project, with a beauty ornamental richness façade, and a central iron cupola.
Without this Council it wasn’t possible to preserve the initial traces of Bairro Alto, as the architectonic characteristics continuity, presents still today in the pombalino urbanism.
After the fire in 1863, started its reconstruction, with the intervention of other architects and engineers like José Luis Monteiro.
Its interior is rich with works of art, paints and sculptures made by great Portuguese artists like Columbano, Sequeira, Malhoa and Neves Júnior.
In the square there is one of the most interesting decorative columns set in public squares in Portugal. It’s a spiral column constructed in the XVIII century, crowned with a gold metal sphere.