Lisbon’s City Museum is celebrating 100 years of existence today. It’s only been at its present location since 1979 but
was created on July 15 of 1909, having several homes after that which included the city hall palace on Municipal Square and Carmo Convent not too far away.
To mark today’s anniversary, it is hosting special free events but is also announcing its future plans. Among them are several new branches around the city concentrating on different themes and historical periods, hoping to attract a larger number of visitors to its collection. Its current home is located in a busy, mostly-business area uptown close to roads leading to the city’s suburbs, and is therefore often forgotten by local and foreign tourists, and even by the most dedicated Lisbophiles. But it is easy to reach, using the green line of the metro, and found right across the street from one of the Campo Grande station’s exits.
The collection consists mostly of archaeological finds and paintings, and tells the story of Lisbon from past to present, with special attention going to the 18th century. That’s when the city was destroyed by the Great Earthquake of 1755 and there is a large model showing how it looked before that disaster.

And a reminder: Today is also the opening day of a major new exhibition in the city organized by Washington DC’s Smithsonian, now also presented in Lisbon’s Ancient Art Museum, as previously reported here: New Exhibition Shows How Lisbon Started Globalization

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Art, Events, Sights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.