When King Dom Manuel built a Royal Palace in Santos at the beginning of the XVI century, a number of aristocratic families also came to live in the area, along with some religious orders. The Casa das Janelas Verdes and its annexe belonged to one of those families – the Counts of São Lourenço-Sabugosa – who owned several large properties in the same part of the city.

The Rua das Janelas Verdes (Green Windows Street) became one of Lisbon's main thoroughfares and formed part of a major road that ran from the Portas de Santa Catarina (in the Chiado quarter) to the Belém area. Its importance only decreased when a landfill extended the city's shoreline into the Tagus Estuary and subsequently made it possible to build Rua 24 de Julho.

However, the predictable decline that ensued actually ended up by helping to enhance the street's history, when in 1880 two English ladies opened a small guesthouse in part of the former Mariano Convent. Frequented by numerous writers and intellectuals – António Nobre, Oliveira Martins, Antero de Quental, Guerra Junqueiro and Batalha Reis, among others – it became the meeting place of some of the great artistic and literary figures of the time.

The XIX century thus witnessed a renewal of the street's vocation. It took on a literary and cultural dimension that has become internationally recognised and has remained alive until today.

The great novelist Eça de Queirós made a decisive contribution to this evolution when he located 'O Ramalhete' – the famous house in the novel 'Os Maias' – in the street. Eça's immortalization of the whole of the Janelas Verdes Quarter at the beginning of his masterful tale made the street the object of an obligatory pilgrimage on the part of the thousands of Queirós fans who come from Portugal and abroad to visit us.

The possibility that Eça de Queirós lived in the Count of Sabugosa's house for a while – the Count was a personal friend, and like Eça, a member of the 'Vanquished by Life' group – makes the writer's presence in the quarter even more vivid, enriching the past of a house that takes us back to a time that is well worth revisiting.

The outer appearance of the Casa das Janelas Verdes is discrete and severe and reveals little to casual passers-by. Like the street, it only discloses its secrets to those who stay for a while.

Our visitor is welcomed in the living room, where the fireplace, the old piano, the books, the paintings and the souvenirs recount memories from the time of Eça de Queirós.

The beautiful spiral staircase takes him up to the bedrooms, which are cheerful, spacious and welcoming. In this place that has been forgotten by time, he senses the romantic and tender Lisbon of another era.

A glance through the library's window reveals the garden, surrounded by old walls covered in ivy – iron tables and chairs, a small fountain and an immense, surprising creeper twining around a cast-iron stairway that winds up the walls to the verandas outside the bedrooms.

The visitor takes a deep breath. The Tagus is right there, in full view. Closing his eyes, he listens to the sounds and savours the tang of the low tide. Lisbon is right there, within reach of all his senses.

He closes the window languorously. Looking around, he feels how the past and the present have joined hands in this house. Comforted, he decides to stay.