Museu de Lamego

Below the long white staircase of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, in the old quarter of Lamego, the former palace of the bishops keeps the Douro’s greatest collection of religious art: the Museu de Lamego, whose halls hold some of the key paintings of the Portuguese Renaissance.

The palace on the hill

The museum is a national museum, housed in the former Paço Episcopal whose thick-walled rooms climb above the town. Lamego was one of the first bishoprics of the reconquered lands north of the Douro, and the palace gathered the treasures of the region’s churches and convents for centuries before the state museum opened here.

Grão Vasco and Flanders

The heart of the collection is the set of altarpiece panels that Vasco Fernandes — Grão Vasco, the great master of the Portuguese Renaissance — painted for Lamego Cathedral in the early sixteenth century, with the Visitação among them. Beside them hang Flemish tapestries woven in Brussels in the same years, when such cloths furnished the palaces and churches of the north.

What to see

• The Grão Vasco panels, including the Visitação
• The Brussels tapestries of the early 1500s
• Religious sculpture and goldwork of the region
• The rooms of the former bishops’ palace
• The view of the Remédios staircase from the streets below

Practical information

The museum stands in the historic centre of Lamego, in the Douro valley of northern Portugal, a few steps from the foot of the Remédios staircase. The streets around it are steep, so allow time for the climb; opening days change through the year — check official information before visiting.

Image credit: Museu de Lamego by Daniel VILLAFRUELA — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.