Museu de História Natural de Sintra

The Museu de História Natural de Sintra is located on Rua do Paço, in the Historic Centre of Sintra’s Old Town, in a building dating from 1893. Inaugurated on 1 August 2009, it grew out of the collection assembled over around 50 years by Miguel Barbosa and his wife, Fernanda Barbosa, later donated to the Municipality of Sintra. The long-term exhibition follows the formation of the Earth and the evolution of life, from the Precambrian to the Quaternary, through the municipal collections of palaeontology, mineralogy, malacology and petrography. Among fossils, minerals, shells, rocks and meteorites, the museum displays pieces from different continents. One of its most relevant elements is the type specimen of a pterosaur whose scientific name honours Miguel Barbosa. Small in urban scale, the museum opens in Sintra an unexpected window onto the deep history of the planet.