Do you know this Portuguese Christmas Tradition – "Doll Healing"?
Welcome to the world's oldest surviving doll hospital
From elaborately-costumed German porcelain dolls in glass-fronted armor to a black doll made in 1915 in Angola, Cutileiro, a former primary school teacher, is far from spooked by her motley crew of patients. Some of their stories have been lost to time.
Others traveled with immigrants and refugees and now represent a family’s singular possession left from home. We don’t value one over another here, though, Cutileiro says. To us, all the dolls are valuable.
Others traveled with immigrants and refugees and now represent a family’s singular possession left from home. We don’t value one over another here, though, Cutileiro says. To us, all the dolls are valuable.
If it were not because I accidentally saw the story in National Geographic, I would probably still live in happy ignorance of a very bizarre and spooky attraction only 10 minutes walk down the hill from Tings.
The Doll Hospital – or Hospital de Bonecas as the venue’s real name is.
This is the weirdest museum I’ve ever visited. In one room you’re surrounded by dolls in all sizes, colors, shapes and ‘conditions’. In another room eyes are looking at you from shelves, drawers, from desks behind loose legs, arms, heads, torsos and other unrecognizable limbs. The spare part the Doll Doctors use to repair all the dolls. Something they have done since 1830 when Carlota Georgina Severo created the doll hospital after she witnessed a child crying because her doll was broken.
How cute is that 😉
The Doll Hospital is Lisbon's strangest Christmas Tradition
You can visit the Doll Museum all year. But at Christmas time its something special.
I only found out why at a later visit.
When the Portuguese unpack all their Christmas decoration items, a lot of the old Baby Dolls they use for the Baby Jesus in their Christmas Cribs breaks. As the cribs have to be ‘up’ before Christmas they need to fix the Baby Jesus asap.
The Doll Doctors at Hospital de Bonecas are the only ones who can do that. So they are busy in December healing Dolls.
Highly recommended
Thomas
