Cultural places in Portugal

Museum • Faro, Faro

In Faro’s Vila-Adentro, the Museu Municipal de Faro occupies the former Convent of Nossa Senhora da Assunção, classified as a National Monument. The convent was founded by D. Leonor, wife of King João II, and construction began in 1519, continuing until the cloister was completed in 1550. After the extinction of the religious orders, the building had several uses and even housed a cork factory. In 1960, the Municipal Council acquired it to install the Museu Arqueológico e Lapidar Infante D. Henrique, which had operated in the Town Hall since 1894. Today, the quadrangular cloister, with its boxwood garden, organises a route between convent architecture and urban memory. The collection highlights archaeological materials from prehistory to the Roman and medieval periods, including the Ocean Mosaic, from the 2nd/3rd centuries, busts of Hadrian and Agrippina, inscriptions from Ossonoba, Islamic art and painting from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Science Centre • Faro, Faro

Next to Faro Marina, the Centro Ciência Viva do Algarve turns the closeness of the Ria Formosa into a starting point for scientific discovery. Housed in a century-old building originally built to accommodate the Algarve’s first power station, it opened on 3 August 1997 as the first interactive centre in the National Network of Ciência Viva Centres. Its main exhibition is dedicated to the sea, with aquariums and modules that bring natural, environmental and physical-chemical phenomena close to the regional reality. The Apalpário, a tank dedicated to species typical of the Algarve coast and the Ria Formosa, allows close observation of organisms from the intertidal zone, with support from monitors. The centre also includes spaces on light, the brain and the senses, a garden with energy modules, a technological greenhouse and a rooftop terrace facing the Ria Formosa, used for observing wading birds.