Museu da Música Portuguesa

Hidden in the quiet streets of Monte Estoril, a few minutes uphill from the seafront, the Museum of Portuguese Music occupies one of the most charming houses in the Lisbon area: the Casa Verdades de Faria, a romantic tower built by an Irish-descended gentleman and his architect friend Raul Lino. Inside is one of Europe’s most important collections of folk instruments.

An Irish tower for a Portuguese singer of songs

The house was built from 1918 by Jorge O’Neill, who knew it as St Patrick’s Tower, and later enlarged with a two-storey cloister and sheltered garden. Its next owners, Enrique Mantero Belard and his wife Gertrudes Verdades de Faria, left it to the town of Cascais with one condition: that it become a museum named after her. The music came from two great legacies — the folk-instrument collection of the ethnomusicologist Michel Giacometti, acquired in 1981, and the estate of the composer Fernando Lopes-Graça, who left the museum his papers, records and pianos in 1994.

What to see

• Traditional Portuguese instruments, from bagpipes to guitars
• The Lopes-Graça collection, including his own pianos
• Azulejo panels from palaces and chapels around the country
• A romantic garden of some 12,000 square metres
• Temporary concerts and exhibitions of Portuguese music

Practical information

The museum is at Avenida Sabóia 1146, Monte Estoril, a short walk uphill from Monte Estoril station. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00–18.00, closed on Mondays, and is part of the Cascais municipal museum network.

Image credit: Museu da Música Portuguesa by Rúdisicyon — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.