Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança

In Lumiar, the National Museum of Theatre and Dance keeps the living memory of the Portuguese stage. Housed in the eighteenth-century Monteiro-Mor complex, it brings together the country’s most extensive collection on the performing arts, with costumes, set models, props, posters, scores, photographs and archives that reveal centuries of creation, rehearsal and applause. The museum has the rare ability to show theatre not as distant art, but as work shaped by body, voice and imagination. Since the important donation made by José Sasportes in 2015, dance has gained an even more central place here, strengthening the museum’s very identity. During a visit, it is also worth noticing the atmosphere of old Monteiro-Mor: an eighteenth-century aristocratic setting linked to gardens with tropical species and exotic birds. Between memory, study and invention, this is a place that brings us closer to what happens before the curtain rises.