The 10 MOST Popular Museums in Portugal: Art & History
Visiting Portugal is immersing yourself in a lot of history, besides magnificent churches with monumental interiors, castles, great gastronomy, getting to know the best museums in Portugal during your stay will be wonderful. To dive into the culture and history of the Portuguese country is to take a lot of baggage with you.
Portugal is small, but packed with attractions and sights! Going to a museum can be an amazing plan for a weekend, so here are 10 museums from north to south of the country that you must add to your bucket list!
Serralves Museum (Porto)
Serralves Museum is located in the city of Porto, in a beautiful and wooded area. It is an important museum of contemporary art in Portugal. With beautiful gardens, the museum also has incredible travelling exhibitions, as well as a library, auditorium and many events open to the public throughout the year. It’s free every first Sunday of each month!
More information here: https://www.serralves.pt/
Caloste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon)
The Museu Calouste Gulbenkian is located in Lisbon and holds the private collection of the founder Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, a philanthropist of Armenian origin, who lived in Portugal between 1942 and 1955. The collection has over 6,000 works from antiquity to the beginning of the 20th century. It’s free every Sunday from 2pm.
More information here: https://gulbenkian.pt/en/
National Museum of Ancient Art (Lisbon)
This is one of the best museums in Portugal. The Museum was created in 1884, and has been for almost 130 years in the Alvor Palace and houses the largest public Portuguese collection of art with over 40,000 items, including: paintings, sculptures, goldsmithery and decorative arts, European, from Africa and the Orient.
More information here: http://www.museudearteantiga.pt/
MAAT Museum (Lisbon)
Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology is recent and is located in a privileged area of Lisbon, in Belém. With incredible exhibitions, the museum is always welcoming novelties and inviting artists. Events are also frequent in this cultural space in Lisbon.
More information here: https://www.maat.pt/en
World of Discoveries (Porto)
An Interactive Museum and Theme Park that reconstructs the fantastic odyssey of Portuguese navigators. In total there are 5000 square meters of experience for all the senses, supported by state-of-the-art technology, with some unique solutions in the country such as the fantastic 4D Globes or the fog screens, curtains of mist that open the way to fantastic worlds such as Cabo das Tormentas .
More information here: https://www.worldofdiscoveries.com/
Machado de Castro National Museum (Coimbra)
Machado de Castro National Museum is located in the city of Coimbra and is one of the best museums in Portugal. The museum of fine arts was built in honor of sculptor Machado de Castro.
More information here: https://www.patrimoniocultural.gov.pt/
Museum of Discoveries (Belmonte)
The Museum of Discoveries is exactly what you are thinking. It tells the history and all the deeds of Pedro Álvares Cabral when he discovered Brazil. The museum tells more than 500 years of history through a lot of technology and interactivity.
More information here: https://cm-belmonte.com/q_node/10/
Amália Rodrigues Museum (Lisboa)
The Amália Rodrigues Museum is located in Lisbon, the capital of the country, and is a tribute to the greatest fado singer in history. Amália was and remains an icon of Portugal. The artist sold over 30 million records and was enshrined in several countries around the world. The foundation and museum is open every day from 10am to 6pm.
More information here: http://amaliarodrigues.pt/en/home-page/
Carris Museum (Lisboa)
Carris Museum presents an incredible collection of Portugal's transports. Located in Lisbon, it has relics of trams from Portugal, as well as several temporary thematic exhibitions and many cultural and business events in Lisbon.
More information here: https://museu.carris.pt/en/homepage-museu/
Biscainhos Museum (Braga)
The Biscainhos Museum is located in the city of Braga, in Northern Portugal. The palace has been converted into a museum and holds an incredible collection from the 17th to 19th centuries. The gardens of the palace are also open to visitation and it is a beautiful walk through the city of Braga.
More information here: https://www.visitportugal.com/en/content/museu-dos-biscainhos
Let us know if you already went to some of these museums! Do you want a round two with most popular monuments?
See you!
Juliane (Ju) OLS Community Manager