Casa-Museu Marta Ortigão Sampaio

The Casa-Museu Marta Ortigão Sampaio is one of the quiet treasures of Porto: the house of a family of collectors, kept as it was lived, with its paintings, its jewellery and its furniture. Among its rooms hang works by the painters of the Souza family — Aurélia de Souza and Sofia Martins de Souza — two of the great names of Portuguese art at the turn of the twentieth century.

The house-museum

The house belonged to Marta Ortigão Sampaio, who left it to the city of Porto to become a museum. Its collections gather paintings, jewellery and decorative arts, in the intimate setting of a lived-in house: the portraits and scenes of Aurélia de Souza, the work of her sister Sofia, and the objects of a refined Porto family of the early twentieth century. It is a museum of atmosphere, where the visit feels like a visit to a house.

What to see

• The paintings of Aurélia de Souza and Sofia Martins de Souza.
• The jewellery and decorative arts of the collection.
• The rooms and furniture of the house, kept as they were lived.
• The paintings and prints of the Porto school around them.

Visiting

The house-museum is a municipal museum of Porto, in a residential street of the city, visited in a quiet hour; the opening times and conditions follow the official information of the municipality. A visit combines well with the museums and gardens of the western part of the city.

Nearby

Le musée Serralves et l’ Casa-Museu Guerra Junqueiro show two other faces of the museums of Porto. The Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis continues the painting and sculpture of Porto.

Information: cm-porto.pt.

Image credit: Santo António (1902), by Aurélia de Souza, in the collection of the Casa-Museu — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.