[1] Teatro do Salitre was built on the initiative of a businessman named João Gomes Varela, who commissioned the project from the architect Simão Caetano Nunes.

The Portuguese writer and playwright, later to become president, Teófilo Braga, in a study entitled Garrett and the Romantic Drama (1905), transcribes an article in which it is said that the Salitre was only frequented by the "lowest class of society".

According to Ana Isabel de Vasconcelos, it had always been the poor relation of the Rua dos Condes and at the end of the 18th century, when there was a shortage of actors, the Salitre struggled to compete.

To qualify, the Salitre and Rua dos Condes had to put on six shows a year written by Portuguese playwrights and open their facilities to inspection by Garrett.

[4] [6][7] The Teatro do Salitre was demolished in 1879 at the time of the construction of the Avenida da Liberdade a wide avenue leading out of the centre of Lisbon in a northwest direction, that was designed to emulate the boulevards of Paris.