The Portuguese guitar or Portuguese guitarra is a plucked string instrument with twelve steel strings, strung in six courses of two strings. It is one of the few musical instruments that still uses watch-key or Preston tuners. It is iconically associated with the musical genre known as Fado.
Left: Coimbra guitar; right: Lisboa guitar
Portuguese guitar
Fado, by José Malhoa (1910)
António Chainho and his Portuguese guitar (Lisbon model)
Fado is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado was orally transmitted and goes back to the 1820s and 1830s at best. But even that information was frequently modified within the generational transmission process that made it reach us today."
Fado, painting by José Malhoa (1910)
Portuguese guitar
Maria Severa, fado singer (1820–1846)
Coimbra students playing fado in a serenade at the front door of the Old Cathedral of Coimbra (Sé Velha)