Jewish Museum to open in Lisbon,Portugal

According to the Lisbon council,the museum will open in the Alfama area of Lisbon, in the São Miguel square, during the first half of 2017.
The architectural project has already been chosen for the building, as has the management model for the institution.
In a written response to Lusa News Agency the Town Hall said the site was chosen for being “symbolic for the Jewish community and for the city of Lisbon itself, in that the neighbourhood harboured the largest community of Jews of medieval Lisbon.”
The statement recalls that the current project dates back to the term as mayor of João Soares, who is now minister of culture in the government led by António Costa, one of his successors as mayor and the predecessor of the current incumbent, Fernando Medina.
Highlighting the “involvement” of Lisbon’s Jewish community, the council said it was “working with other entities to realise a project focussed on a still little known aspect of the city’s history [that] deserves its own space.”
It is, the statement adds, one of several small themed museums dotted around the city.
Despite having offered rough deadlines for the project, the council refrained from saying exactly when work on the museum would start or from giving estimated budgets.
It stressed the museum “aims to show the importance of the Jewish communities to the history of Lisbon and the country throughout their centuries of existence”, elaborating that the museum “will be a point of reference on a national and international level, in understanding the role of the Jewish in the history of Portugal and the relationships it established, in various periods, with other communities and other powers.”