Cultural places in Portugal

Museum Ship • Almada, Setúbal

Some ships seem to contain an entire empire within them, and the frigate D. Fernando II e Glória is one of them. Built in Daman and launched in 1843, it was the last great ship of the Portuguese Navy to sail entirely under canvas and the last to serve the India Run. Over 33 years it covered more than 100,000 nautical miles in a succession of voyages linking Lisbon to Portugal’s overseas world. It later served as the Naval Artillery School, housed a social institution for disadvantaged boys and, in 1963, was nearly lost in a fire that left it half-submerged. Restored and opened to the public in 1998, it returned as a museum ship. During a visit, it is worth lingering on the main deck, the gun deck and the cabins: among the masts, the teak wood and the cramped spaces, the hardship and scale of life on board become easier to grasp. Remarkably, it never entered combat.

Museum • Almada, Setúbal

High above Almada Velha, facing Lisbon and the Tagus, Casa da Cerca brings together an old leisure estate and one of the most distinctive cultural projects on the south bank. Built between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the manor house was enlarged over time; in the chapel survive tile panels attributed to Master P.M.P., and in the oldest part there are still traces of a blocked sixteenth-century doorway. After decades of private use and a period of neglect, the building was restored by the municipal council and opened in 1993 as a Centre for Contemporary Art, through the initiative of Rogério Ribeiro, with special attention to drawing. The garden deepens that rare identity: O Chão das Artes, inaugurated in 2001, brings together botany, art and science through plants linked to pigments, fibres, oils and other materials used in artistic creation. Between the white house, the walls and the light on the river, the place has the calm of a belvedere and the curiosity of a laboratory.

Museum Ship • Almada, Setúbal

In Cacilhas, in the municipality of Almada, the Barracuda Submarine returned to public contact as a museum ship of the Portuguese Navy. Inaugurated in this new role on 9 May 2024 and open to visitors since 11 May, it forms part of the Cacilhas dry dock, alongside the Frigate D. Fernando II e Glória. Built in France, it was the second of four Albacora-class submarines in the Portuguese Navy. It entered service on 4 May 1968 and completed its last mission in 2010, after 42 years of operational life. With a length of 54 metres, a submerged displacement of 1,038 tonnes and a crew of 54 servicemen, it could operate down to 300 metres and carry 12 torpedoes. Over its career, it carried out national and international missions and covered 263,358 nautical miles. Today, the dark hull and compact interior reveal the technical precision and discipline required by submarine navigation.