Photo: Jose Luis Filpo Cabana · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Museu Nacional de Arqueologia

Leading museum of Portuguese archaeology, founded by Leite de Vasconcelos in 1893 and housed in the Jerónimos Monastery, closed for refurbishment.

Temporarily closed

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Temporarily closed. The museum has been closed since 2022 for comprehensive refurbishment under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR); no reopening date has been announced.

About the museum

The Museu Nacional de Arqueologia was founded in December 1893, on the proposal of José Leite de Vasconcelos, under the name Museu Etnológico Português. The royal decree, promulgated by King D. Carlos, was countersigned by two ministers in the government of Hintze Ribeiro, João Chagas and Bernardino Machado. Leite de Vasconcelos was the first director and conceived the museum as a kind of “Museum of the Portuguese Man”.

The collection brings together the initial collections of the founder and of Estácio da Veiga, to which were added archaeological collections from the former Royal Household, incorporated after the establishment of the Republic, those of the former Museum of Fine Arts, and numerous donations and bequests. Over more than a century, the museum has established itself as the leading reference institution for Portuguese archaeology, with regular correspondence with museums, universities and research centres around the world, and has published the scientific journal O Arqueólogo Português since 1895.

The museum occupies part of the Jerónimos Monastery in Belém and retains its mission of telling the story of settlement in the territory, from its origins to the Middle Ages, although its collections include items up to the 20th century. It has been closed since 2022 for comprehensive refurbishment under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), which will give it a new permanent exhibition.