Literature

literature is closely related to poetry in Portuguese culture and a lot of people crossed into different professions with music, theatre, literature and poetry to portray a wider form of art and skill.

Dance

Portuguese dance is still celebrated in the streets all over the country as well as in restaurants and bars, dancers wear anything from traditional dress to work wear,children and adults join in. A popular dance would be the circle dance, typically moving in a circular direction moving their feet to the beat of the music and clapping hands.

Food

Food (and drink) play a big part in Portuguese culture, the people are very proud of their country and the types of food they produce. Like the Spanish Portugues tend to eat tea/supper later on in the day. I found that the main ingredients used in dished were Fish or seafood different types of meat spiced pork or sausage and vegetables. A popular dessert would be something like rice pudding with cinnamon, pineapple in Port or custard tarts

Fashion

I found this area one of the hardest to research, although there was plenty of traditional dress information, there was a lot less on modern wear it was mainly on high fashion which is everywhere in Europe. I did find that Portuguese tend to wear a lot of cotton and linen made materials, I am presuming because of the heat. Traditional dress consists of bold, bright colours, basque like (tight waisted) full skirts, head pieces and wide full length sleeves.

Art/Architecture

Manueline (aka) late Gothic style Architecture. I find this type of building very interesting and one of my favourite styles in history. This style is mainly influenced by other countries from travelling or foreign people that settled in Portugal (Africa,East India, elements also taken from Spanish Plateresque style,Italian urban and Flemish elements.

Cork: Portuguese make alot of the worlds cork which is used in everyday life in design and can be recycled. more than 50 % of the worlds cork trees are grown here below are pictures of raw cork and also a picture of how it could be used in everyday design.

'Azulejo' (form painted,tin glazed ceramic tile)which is popular all over portugal as artwork. It is also used for paving and in homes as a form of temperature control.

Music

I began looking at music as a culture within Portugal as this was the area that stood out to me the most. The first words I used to search were "famous Portuguese music" and a type of music called Fado came up. I looked at it's historical background and learnt that Fado is widely used all over the country with many different styles of singing and meanings, although it is generally used to describe nostalgic feelings such as home sickness or past love etc.Carlos Saura stood out as I found hed used Fado music over a range of areas like film and dance routines (tango) as well as music videos. Here are a few pictures that caught my interest.