When I was looking at pictures of Portugal, I fell in love with their Azulejos, or tiles. They're…read morewonderful and so detail oriented. Truly beautiful pieces of art. In my research to find out where I could buy some to bring home, Fábrica Sant'Anna popped up in every blog and article I read about. They have two locations in Lisbon, the one with the original factory from the 1700's is a bit bigger than the one downtown. You can buy individual small tiles to medium sized ones to larger ones. You can buy a set that make up a picture to a large artistic piece that is several feet tall and wide. The little tiles make great little gifts for people back home. I ended up choosing several tiles of various sizes in the same color scheme to make up a collage of tiles. They also have everything from hand painted tea sets to door knobs to big and little vases to chairs and a table. The traditional colors are the white and blue tiles but I found myself drawn to the more colorful ones. They are very helpful and you can ask them if they have certain pieces or things that you want on your tile. They can also do custom orders as well and they do ship internationally. The lady that worked at the original warehouse told us that you can take a picture of what you want and that she would capture that on the tile. Outside of the original warehouse where they originally made the tiles, you can peruse the different Azulejos that they've made. All of the tiles are baked at an extremely high temperature too so you can use them outside or even as a hot pad. I highly recommend coming here, even if it's just to satisfy your artistic soul.
