There’s a Tile Theft Epidemic in Lisbon

Jorge Costa was looking forward to a lazy Sunday when one of the employees at his Lisbon café called him up, breathlessly breaking terrible news: Much of one of the tile murals that had graced the façade of the Leitaria da Anunciada for the better part of 70 years had been ripped off the wall, leaving a gaping hole of exposed plaster.

Nearly 60 hand-painted tiles depicting a pastoral scene of grazing cows had been stolen, apparently in the early morning hours, when there’s little traffic in this largely commercial neighborhood off of Lisbon’s tony Avenida Liberdade. The tiles had been commissioned by the first owner of the Leitaria—which opened in 1927 as a dairy, with cows and goats living inside the building—after new hygiene rules forced him to move the animals out of the city.