Museums
Lisbon has more than 50 Museums, which exhibit pieces and works of art ranging from Antiquity to the present day. In a city with more than 3,000 years of history, there are traces dating from its founding by the Phoenicians, pieces that testify the Portuguese discoveries of the XV to the XVII centuries or even design pieces signed by famous international designers of this century. Art works (by artists such as Dürer, Bosch, Picasso, Jean Paul Gaultier, Paula Rego), sciences, ethnography, music, all of this can be found in Lisbon’s Museums. Most of them charge an entrance fee (information on prices can be found on each page), but on Sundays and until 14h00, entrance is free in all public Museums.
Museums in Lisbon
Museu do Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau
The Museum of the Scientific and Cultural Centre of Macao (MCCCM) is located in Junqueira and was opened in 1999. It features two different but complementary exhibitions: The 1st exhibition invites us to know the cultural aspects of the Luso-Chinese secular relations. Here, we are introduced on the historical and cultural condition of Macau in [...]
Museu do Mar – Rei D. Carlos
Situated in Cascais upper centre, the King Carlos Sea Museum, pays homage in its name to the penultimate Portuguese King, a great oceanographer and sea lover. In 1992, the Municipality of Cascais inaugurated this museum dedicated to the sea, and gave it the king’s name as recognition for his contribution on the promotion of the [...]
Museu Etnográfico da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa
The Ethnographic Museum is located in the beautiful building of the Geographical Society of Lisbon, next to the Coliseu dos Recreios. It is found on the 2nd floor, on a magnificent room 50 m long that accompanies the entire facade of the building. The interior is entirely decorated in the taste of the 19th century [...]
Museu Geológico
The Geological Museum is located in the birthplace of the Portuguese Geology and Archaeology. It was around the year of 1859, when the national pioneers of geology, Carlos Ribeiro; Nery Delgado, Pereira da Costa, Paul Choffat and others, begun to collect samples of fossils, rocks, minerals and archaeological objects, constituting then the first collections displayed in [...]
Museu Maçónico Português
Founded in 1984, the Portuguese Masonic Museum has the purpose of raising awareness of Freemasonry, its activities and its history in Portugal. It’s located in Bairro Alto, in the headquarters of Grande Oriente Lusitano, which is a Masonic Obedience founded in 1802 by some Portuguese free-masons. Initially the museum had a limited collection, but, over [...]
Museu Nacional de Etnologia
The National Museum of Ethnology was created in 1965 and is located in the neighbourhood of Restelo. As its name implies, this museum shows to visitors, artefacts from several people, so-called primitive, from the most varied origins. Collected since the first Portuguese maritime voyages, to the most recent travellers (as the anthropologist Jorge Dias and his [...]
Museu Nacional de História Natural
Situated in the attractive Rua da Escola Politecnica, the National Museum of Natural History belongs to the University of Lisbon. Together they promote scientific research and dissemination in the fields of zoology, anthropology, mineralogy, palaeontology and botanic. The historical building where the museum is standing, exists (together with the Science Museum) since the 17th century, [...]
Museum of Modern Art
Located in Sintra on an old casino (1920), the Museum of Modern Art shows part of the Berardo collection of modern and contemporary art that is not displayed in the Berardo museum in Lisbon. In 1997, after the restoration of the beautiful building, the museum opened doors with a collection that shows the main artistic [...]
Museum of Portuguese Music – Casa Verdades de Faria
The Museum of Portuguese Music is installed in the beautiful Casa Verdades de Faria, located at Monte Estoril. In the origin of this building is the suggestive Tower of St. Patrick, built in 1918 by the will of George O’Neill, a direct descendant of the Irish Royal Family. The project is from the renowned architect Raul [...]
Museum of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
The Museum of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has its origin in the magnificent private collection of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, an Armenian wealthy businessman, pioneer in oil exploration and a great art lover. After his death in 1955, he left his goods to Portugal in the form of a foundation bearing his name. This was opened [...]
