The International Conference “Foreigners in Lisbon in the 15th and 16th Centuries” takes place between the 26th and 27th of October, at Colégio Almada Negreiros, room 209 (2nd floor).

The presence of foreign communities is a distinctive mark of 15th and 16thcentury Lisbon. They are heterogeneous colonies with a marked identity (they define themselves primarily by their opposition to the Portuguese Other), but they are increasingly rooted in the human framework that makes up the dynamic city.

Fernão Lopes, in the prologue to the Crónica de D. Fernando, referred to them as the “many and wild people”. It’s worth noting that they contributed to the city’s productivity and growth in a wide variety of areas, with special emphasis on the financial, mercantile and craftsmen’s activities. The Portuguese capital, which was booming at the time, could no longer be thought of without its colorful and frenetic workforce.

Starting from this reality, which brings with it a multitude of questions, the Congress in question – to be held on 26 and 27 October 2023 in Lisbon – will be based, on the one hand, on the dichotomies tolerance/intolerance, inclusion/exclusion, acceptance/rejection, privileging/limiting; on the other, on the fundamental principles of valuing tolerance and accepting difference with the Other, pressing issues in today’s European daily life and on the world political agenda.

These are issues that are as relevant as they are urgent, given that we live in a time when historiographical, sociological, and anthropological interest in the exercise of otherness is at an all-time high. Knowing its past is therefore an essential step towards understanding its present and future.

This is all the more true when it comes to Lisbon. For centuries, the geostrategic position of the city known as the head of the kingdom has made it a crossroads between Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. A point of arrival and departure, a place of cultural exchanges and encounters, a space par excellence for contact and diversity.

Today, as at the turning point under study, the city of the Seven Hills wants to become a cosmopolitan and genuinely intercultural urban center.

The International Conference “Foreigners in Lisbon in the 15th and 16th Centuries” is the result of a partnership between the Institute of Medieval Studies (IEM), and Lisbon City Council.