Science Centre • Lisboa, Lisboa

Beside the Jerónimos Monastery, the Navy Planetarium has the rare grace of places that still teach us to look up. Opened in 1965, from an idea by Commander Eugénio Conceição Silva and designed by the architect Frederico George, it was born from the meeting of scientific purpose, naval tradition and the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Its great dome turned it into a true theatre of the sky, where generations of visitors discovered constellations, nebulae and the old art of guiding a journey by the stars. The renovation at the start of the twenty-first century strengthened that immersive experience without erasing the building’s character. It is worth noticing the contrast between the sober exterior and the sense of scale inside the auditorium, where Lisbon seems to disappear for a while. In Belém, among monuments linked to the sea, this planetarium reminds us that navigation has always depended on reading the heavens.

Cultural Centre • Lisboa, Lisboa

Among Belém’s great historic symbols, the Belém Cultural Centre marks the moment when Lisbon decided to inscribe its modernity too into the city’s monumental landscape. Its construction was decided in 1988, in the context of Portugal’s European presidency in 1992, and the project by Vittorio Gregotti and Manuel Salgado imagined a kind of open city, made of buildings, streets, squares and bridges, in dialogue with Praça do Império, the Jerónimos Monastery and the Tagus. During a visit, it is worth exploring the outdoor spaces as much as the auditoriums and exhibition rooms, because the CCB is not understood only from within: it also lives in the light, the voids and the relationship between pale stone and the river. Today, listed as a Monument of Public Interest, it remains one of the places where Lisbon shows, with remarkable ease, that contemporary architecture can also create memory.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

Set inside the former church of Saint Julian, the Money Museum is one of those places where Lisbon reveals itself in layers. Open to the public since 2016, it occupies a building restored as part of the rehabilitation of the Bank of Portugal’s headquarters, and that long biography gives depth to a museum devoted to money, its history and the ways people exchange value. Along the route, coins, banknotes, machines and multimedia displays show how money has shaped trade, power and everyday life, without losing sight of the human scale. Yet two details make the visit especially memorable: the Wall of King Dinis, preserved within the museum, and the gold bar that visitors can touch. Between medieval remains, the old nave of Saint Julian and contemporary museography, the place achieves something rare: it speaks about economics without coldness and shows that behind every coin there is always a story of city, power and imagination.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

In the Convento das Bernardas, in Madragoa, the Puppet Museum shows how a small object can hold an entire world. Founded in 1987, it was the first museum in Portugal entirely devoted to puppetry and, since 2001, it has been housed in this former seventeenth-century convent, almost destroyed by the 1755 earthquake and later rebuilt. The collection brings together more than 3,000 pieces across different places, techniques and periods, yet the heart of the visit beats most strongly in the Portuguese traditions, from the Robertos to the Bonecos de Santo Aleixo. Along the way appear shadow puppets, string puppets, rod puppets, African and Asian masks, and even a section linked to animation cinema. It is also worth slowing down to feel the building itself: the cloister, the adapted former church and the atmosphere suspended between theatre and retreat. It is a museum that speaks of childhood, certainly, but also of memory, artifice and the old human desire to give soul to things.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

High on Rua das Janelas Verdes, the National Museum of Ancient Art is one of those places where Portugal seems to tell its own story with unusual clarity. Opened in 1884, to give a home to many works that came from convents and monasteries after the extinction of the religious orders, it was installed in the former Palace of the Counts of Alvor and became the country’s great house of ancient art. Its collection crosses centuries and geographies, from painting to goldsmithing, from sculpture to works from Europe, Africa and the East, yet some encounters ask for real pause: the Panels of Saint Vincent, the Belém Monstrance, the Namban screens. During a visit, it is also worth slowing down in the garden facing the Tagus, where the city seems to breathe differently. Between palace, collection and horizon, the museum leaves a rare impression: that history, when well kept, remains alive.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

On Alcântara’s waterfront, the Orient Museum shows how a former dockside warehouse can become a place where worlds meet. Opened in 2008 inside the modernist building of the former refrigerated cod warehouses, designed from 1939 onwards, it holds two collections that define its character with unusual clarity. On one side, Portuguese Presence in Asia brings together thousands of objects and reveals the fascination, exchange and curiosity that shaped the relationship between Portugal and the East. On the other, the Kwok On collection, regarded as one of the most representative of its kind in Europe, opens a path into the performing arts, rituals and popular religions of a much wider Asia. During a visit, it is worth noticing the contrast between the building’s industrial sobriety and the richness of puppets, masks, folding screens, ivories and ritual objects. Few museums in Lisbon manage to feel at once so calm, so layered and so open to dialogue.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

Stepping into the Carris Museum is like understanding Lisbon in motion. Housed in Santo Amaro Station, Carris’s first station, the museum preserves the memory of a company founded in 1872, intriguingly in Rio de Janeiro, before it transformed the way the capital expanded and overcame its hills. Here, the history of public transport meets the history of the city itself: from horse-drawn streetcars to the funiculars, from the electrification of the network to twentieth-century buses. Among photographs, uniforms, tickets, machinery and historic vehicles, visitors follow the technical, social and urban changes that shaped everyday life in Lisbon. One of the most memorable moments is the journey between the two exhibition areas on a tram from 1901, which gives the visit a rare sense of authenticity. More than a transport museum, this is a place where Lisbon can be seen growing along its rails.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

The Maritime Museum, housed since 1962 in the wings of Jerónimos Monastery, does more than display vessels: it tells the long intimacy between Portugal and the sea. Created on the initiative of King Luís in 1863, it began with a didactic purpose, yet today the visit feels like a journey through time. Among models, charts, instruments and paintings, visitors sense how the ocean was a route for trade, science, war and imagination. The most striking moment awaits in the Barge Pavilion, built to house full-size boats. There, the Royal Brig stands out for its gilded carving, mythological figures and the Venetian mirrors in its stern cabin, but also for its story: in 1808 it carried the royal family to the squadron that sailed to Brazil and, already in the twentieth century, it returned to the water for the official visit of Queen Elizabeth the Second. Few places show so clearly how the sea helped shape Portuguese power and memory.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

The National Coach Museum is one of those places where history seems to pass before your eyes in procession. Created on the initiative of Queen Amélia in 1905 to gather and preserve the royal vehicles scattered across different palaces, it began in the former Royal Riding School of Belém and, more than a century later, gained a new building designed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha. The collection, regarded as unique in the world, shows how power was displayed on wheels, through luxury, ceremony and diplomacy. Among coaches, berlins and litters, the eye is drawn to the celebrated Coach of the Oceans, one of the museum’s treasures, built for the embassy sent by King João the Fifth to Pope Clement the Eleventh in 1716. Its exuberant carving and allegories linked to the sea and the Discoveries reveal the grand image Portugal wished to project. Visiting this museum is like stepping into a theatre of splendour where memory moves at the solemn pace of horses.

Museum • Lisboa, Lisboa

MAAT Central is one of those places where Lisbon can be understood as a modern city. Formerly the Tejo Power Station, this thermoelectric plant began operating in 1909 and supplied the capital for decades, first continuously and later as a reserve station, before being reborn as a museum space. The building, with its red brick, iron and vast windows, is one of the landmarks of Portuguese industrial architecture, yet what impresses most is stepping inside and finding the original machinery still in place. In the exhibition The Electricity Factory, boilers, turbo-alternators and walkways reveal the almost theatrical scale of energy production and recall the time when coal helped to light Lisbon. Today, as part of the MAAT campus, the former plant has gained a new life without losing its raw force. It is a rare place, where technology, memory and city still speak to one another.