Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis

Portugal’s first public art museum occupies the Carrancas Palace in central Porto, a neoclassical building from the end of the eighteenth century. The Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis holds one of the finest collections of Portuguese art, with painting, sculpture, furniture, metalwork and ceramics from the sixteenth century to the twentieth.

Portugal’s first public museum

The museum has its origins in 1833, when Pedro IV created a museum to safeguard the assets taken from convents and supporters of the absolutist cause during the civil war. It became a national museum in 1932 and moved to the Carrancas Palace, which was remodelled in 2001 with projects by the architect Fernando Tavora.

What to see

• Sculpture by Antonio Soares dos Reis, including his celebrated The Exiled, after whom the museum is named.
• Portuguese painting of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with works by Domingos Sequeira, Silva Porto, Marques de Oliveira and Aurelia de Souza.
• Ten works classified as national treasures, among them jewellery and decorative arts.
• Two gardens, the Camellia Garden and the Velodrome Garden, within the palace grounds.

Visiting the museum

The museum is at Rua D. Manuel II 44, 4050-342 Porto, near the Palacio de Cristal. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:30, and is closed on Mondays and on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May, 24 June and 25 December.

Tickets and visitor information: museusoaresdosreis.gov.pt.

Image credit: Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto, by Joseolgon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.