Casa do Exemplo, Lisboa

What Makes Our Community Unique

Casa do Exemplo is a retirement community built around making music together, with residents from around the world sharing studios, dinners, and a hilltop neighborhood where everything is on foot. Most retirement communities are built around what you can no longer do. Casa do Exemplo is built around what you still want to do.

About This Community

Casa do Exemplo is a retire-young community in Graça, one of Lisbon's oldest hilltop neighborhoods, built around a shared love of music.

Our 22 residents live in three adjacent buildings with views of the Tagus from the rooftop and trams rattling past the front door. About a third of us are Portuguese.

The rest have come from across Europe, the Americas, and beyond to spend this chapter of life here. Some of us played professionally. Most of us did not. What we share is that music is how we still want to spend our days.

We have two rehearsal rooms, a small recording studio, and a live room that doubles as our dinner hall. Wednesday nights are open sessions, and anyone who wants to play, sing, or just listen is welcome. Sunday afternoons are quiet by agreement. Three nights a week we cook and eat together. The rest of the week you are on your own, which in Graça means a short walk to a café, a fado house, or the Tuesday market.

Everything we need is on foot. Doctor, pharmacy, bakery, grocer, tram stop, and four restaurants we actually like, all within ten minutes. The airport is twenty minutes by taxi for visiting family, or for them to visit us. Casa do Exemplo was founded in 2021 by six musicians who did not want to stop.