National Maritime Museum in Lisbon, Portugal

Stuart Forster takes a look inside Portugal’s National Maritime Museum in the Belem district of Lisbon.

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Belem’s close associations with Portugal’s Age of Discoveries make it an obvious choice as the location for the Museu da Marinha, the Portuguese National Maritime Museum.

This is Portugal’s second most visited museum. In case you’re wondering, first place goes to the Museu Nacional dos Coches, the National Coach Museum, also in Belem.

Museum in a UNESCO World Heritage Site

One of the wings of the Portuguese National Maritime Museum is within the Manueline-style Heironymites Monastery. The construction of the 16th-century monastery was funded by taxes on imperial trade, much of which docked home in Portugal at the port protected by the Tower of Belem. Today it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of Lisbon’s best-known landmarks.

This sizable museum has exhibits with broad appeal. They cover themes from Portugal’s maritime explorations and expansion during the late Middle Ages to the country’s recent military and civil maritime history.

Remarkably, despite the prodigious size of this museum, just one-fifth of the artefacts belonging to the museum’s collection can be shown at any one time.

There’s good news for English-speaking visitors as the context of artefacts is clarified by legends translated from Portuguese.



Greeted by Henry the Navigator

You’ll be greeted by a sculpture of Prince Henry, just beyond the entrance. Henry encouraged maritime minds to meet at Sagres and is regarded as a key figure in Portuguese maritime history. Some commentators suggest he was a catalyst for the exciting period of exploration that became known as the Age of Discoveries.

Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India, which set sail from Lisbon on 8th July 1497, is one of the best-known aspects of that period of Portuguese maritime history. Of the 170 men who sailed in da Gama’s fleet, 116 were lost.

Unsurprisingly, many seafarers of that era turned to superstition or prayer. The portable oak altar that da Gama took with him on his flagship, the nau named Sao Gabriel, is on display in this museum. So too is a heavy wooden chest that also belonged to the explorer and colonial governor.

Astrolabes, cannons, medals and uniforms count among the exhibits. You’ll get a feel for the development of the Portuguese navy, fishing fleets and even the river traffic that has sailed in Portugal’s territorial waters. Model ships and boats put this into context.



The royal yacht Amelia

Among the most popular of the exhibits within the National Maritime Museum are the richly decorated cabins from Amelia, Portugal’s royal yacht from more than a century ago. The queen’s cabin contains a seat convertible to a bath and the king’s cabin is home to a fireplace and office.

The collection of royal barges, including a gilded yacht dating from 1778 and sailed in by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II during a visit to Portugal in 1957, count among the prize exhibits of this museum.

You can also see an original moliceiro boat from Aveiro, the type of high-prowed vessel sometimes compared with Venetian gondolas, and the Class 470 yacht which Hugo Rocha and Nuno Barreto sailed to a bronze medal at the Atlanta Olympic Games of 1996.

Getting close to Schreck

Schreck too, is housed here. Schreck isn’t a famous ogre from an animated film but a surveillance aircraft that once patrolled over Portugal’s coastal waters. It stands just meters from the Fairley 17 plane called Santa Cruz flown by Coutinho and Cabral from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in their historic Atlantic crossing of 1922.

This museum is well worth a visit and is just one of several tourist attractions in Lisbon’s Belem district. This is a fine location for whiling away a couple of hours on a hot summer afternoon or a wet November morning.



Map of the National Maritime Museum

The map below shows the location of the Museu de Marinha in Lisbon, Portugal:

Google Map showing the National Maritime Museum in Lisbon, Portugal.
 

Hotels in Lisbon, Portugal

Search and book accommodation in Lisbon via Booking.com:



Booking.com

Further information

For opening times and entry prices visit the Portuguese National Maritime Museum website.

To learn more about attractions in Lisbon, see the Visit Lisbon and Visit Portugal websites.

Thank you for visiting Go Eat Do and reading this article about the National Maritime Museum in Portugal. If you are planning a trip to the Portuguese capital you may enjoy this post looking at things to do during 48 hours in Lisbon, Portugal.

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2 Comments

  • Alastair McKenzie

    September 4, 2020 at 02:22 Reply

    Henry the Navigator was always my slightly unorthodox answer to that, ‘Which character from history would you invite on a dinner date?’ question!
    The School of Navigation at Sagres was the NASA of its day.

    • Go Eat Do

      September 7, 2020 at 12:46 Reply

      You’d certainly expect that he could make his way safely to and from your house if you did invite him.

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