Historically an area that was rarely used for building due to its steep slopes, Alto da Fontinha saw its first housing estate built with the arrival of the Fábrica Social da Fontinha. Only ruins remain of the workers' islands of the time - walls and ramparts that can also be found along the plots of the community gardens of Quinta do Alto da Fontinha, one of the main areas of activity of Sport Musas e Benfica - a sports and recreational association founded in 1951, but with origins in 1944 in an amateur football team, the Leões das Musas.

Sport Musas e Benfica is better known as Espaço Musas, a force of collectivism that unfolds in the community gardens of Quinta do Alto da Fontinha, in the ROMP evenings (Recitais Ociosos do Musas - Poesia), in ongoing programmes such as the Seed Bank or Computer Recycling, and in the development of one-off activities such as film cycles, theatre performance workshops or leisure activities for children.

We spoke to Luís Chambel, chairman of the association's board, at the headquarters, among the paraphernalia of chess boards and pieces, and the tomes that sprout from the library shelves like weeds. Of all the activities of the renewed Musas, the one that seems to fill him with the most pride is chess. The focus is on the younger levels, where not only the passion for the game is instilled, but also the discipline of weekly training sessions. As well as frequently organising tournaments, the association does everything it can to help its athletes travel to tournaments outside the city.

There is one object that stands out in the living jars, and which Luís leafs through: a small A5 notebook, published by Musas, with the ten best games of the 2022/2023 season, where there is an individual commentary for each of the 30 or so moves per chess game - a tribute to the affection and accompaniment of this sport.

Luís recalls a fundamental turning point for the association: "a group of young people who lived in the area were very keen to work with children, and a social worker pointed out an association that was in very bad shape and needed to be energised." That's how, in the early 2000s, Sport Musas e Benfica escaped extinction, with "a kind of transfer from the previous generation to these younger ones, which allowed the association to continue".

This continuation was soon jeopardised - the appearance of an investment fund interested in the property almost took the headquarters away from the association. Today, there is an agreement with a new owner to use the premises for ten years, an unstable situation that causes some anxiety.

This is because an irreplaceable asset of the association is attached to the property: the community garden plots at the back of the building. The grounds of the headquarters have been joined by neighbours' yards, resulting in a labyrinthine territory full of vegetation, with an unusual view over Lapa. Under a system of "collective management with individual responsibility", each gardener is responsible for their plot and harvests the fruit they want from it - but all decisions that affect the group or require everyone's input are only taken unanimously. In the office, a map carved from wood outlines, in neat squares and rectangles, the occupation of each plot: "fig", "avocado", "plum", "peach", "pomegranate".

But the reality on the field of this extensive area defies the geometric simplicity of the map: between steep stairs and wild hedges, you negotiate your way, at every corner finding signs of collective work: a stage called "Children's Land", built with recovered materials; a "dry toilet" under construction, for collecting and treating fertiliser; small viewpoints complete with benches; household appliances abandoned by those who no longer live on these cliffs.

Between all these angular spaces, there are a variety of methods: lovingly hand-painted plaques with the name of the fruit that is harvested there, small steps made from reused pottery shards, or bags of earth that act as markers. But above all this activity and manual labour is an area called an agroforest. Difficult to access, the association decided to leave this large expanse of wildly growing land above everything else. Above the falling walls of land disputes and property threats, the hilltop remains as untamed as ever. Something that pleases Luís. "It's one of our responsibilities: to try and ensure that here, almost in the centre of the city, there is a place where nature has its space."