Casa Europa is one of Dili's prettiest survivors: a late-nineteenth-century Portuguese colonial mansion of stuccoed brick, with a deep tiled veranda and high louvred shutters meant for the tropics before air conditioning. It originally housed a wealthy merchant family and has since served as a school, a hospital ward, and a wartime billet.
Now restored by the European Union, the house functions as a cultural centre — exhibitions, lectures, the occasional film screening. Walk in even outside event hours to see the interior: tiled floors, dark hardwood beams, and louvred doors that open onto a small inner courtyard. It sits a couple of blocks back from the seafront in Bidau Lecidere.