Restaurants, bars and museums in Porto · Page 37

Batalha Centro de CinemaOpens in a new tab

Baixa · Cinemas

Batalha Centro de Cinema is at Praça da Batalha 47, 4000-101 Porto, in the Baixa neighbourhood. It has two projection rooms and a 40-square-metre film room for installations. Other spaces include a library and film library, the Sala-Filme, a bookshop and a café/bar. The programme features retrospectives, themed cycles, focuses on contemporary practices and links between film and other arts, along with cine-concert events. The centre is open on Tuesdays and Sundays from 11:00 to 20:00, on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 11:00 to 22:00, and on Fridays and Saturdays from 11:00 to 24:00. Visit Porto lists Monday as closed. Enquiries can go to batalha@agoraporto.pt or +351 225 073 306. Regular film screenings in Porto began in the summer of 1906 at the Salão High-Life, a shack at the Feira de S. Miguel, where the Rotunda da Boavista is today. Manuel da Silva Neves and Edmond Pascaud started the project. After two months it moved to Jardim da Cordoaria, and two years later, as the Novo Salão High-Life, it moved definitively to Praça da Batalha. Artur Andrade designed the cinema that replaced the demolished building. It closed in 2000 and was listed a Monument of Public Interest in 2012. In 2017 Porto City Hall took over management for 25 years, and the building returned to the city in December 2022 after renovation. The building was designed in a modernist spirit that weaves visual arts into its architecture, and it holds works by five artists, among them Júlio Pomar, Arlindo Rocha, António Sampaio and Augusto Gomes. The façade reliefs and Pomar's murals carry symbolic weight because of the censorship of the Estado Novo regime. Pomar's frescoes stayed covered for eight decades because he opposed that regime, which held power from 1933 to 1974, and were rediscovered under six to eight layers of paint. One-hour guided tours follow the building's life phases, from the High-Life cinema of Neves & Pascaud to the renovation by the architects Alexandre Alves Costa and Sérgio Fernandez. They look at the modernist building Artur Andrade designed in 1947, its decorative elements and the censorship of Pomar's murals, and open private spaces such as the rooftop, with views of Praça da Batalha, and the projection rooms. Team members lead the tours on the first Saturday of each month, in Portuguese, with Portuguese Sign Language on prior request.