Museu de Arte Popular

Between the Padrão dos Descobrimentos and the Tower of Belém stands a low white building with painted panels and sculptures on its walls: the Museum of Popular Art, a survivor of the Portuguese World Exhibition of 1940 that has become the national museum of the country’s folk traditions — carts and clogs, ceramics, costumes, festas and the everyday arts of the Portuguese countryside.

A museum of a museum

The pavilion was designed by Veloso Reis Camelo and João Simões for the exhibition of 1940, and reopened as a museum in 1948, with its rooms arranged by region — Minho, Trás-os-Montes, the Beiras, the Alentejo and the Algarve — and its walls decorated by painters of the time. Closed for years in the 2000s, the museum survived a proposal to turn it into a museum of the language, and reopened to preserve exactly what it was: one of the most complete collections of Portuguese popular art, from the painted wagons of the north to the ceramics of the Alentejo, in a building that is itself an exhibit. A short walk away stand the National Museum of Ethnology oraz National Tile Museum, completing a day on the Belém–Xabregas axis of Portuguese identity.

What to see

• The regional collections of popular art
• The painted and carved carts of the Minho
• Alentejo ceramics and the festa traditions
• The 1940s mural decorations of the pavilion
• The riverside setting between the Padrão and the Tower of Belém

Practical information

The museum stands on the Belém waterfront at Avenida de Brasília, between the Padrão dos Descobrimentos and the Tower of Belém. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday, and since 2024 has taken part in the national scheme of free-entry days for residents; note that the museum belongs to the Museu Nacional de Etnologia group, so check its current timetable before travelling.

Image credit: Museu de Arte Popular by Pedro S Bello — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.