Schedules and prices of Ruins and Museum of Carmo

Schedules of Ruins and Archaeological Museum of Carmo

From Monday to Saturday

Close:

Ruins and Archaeological Museum of Carmo tickets

– Until 14 years Free.

Address: Largo do Carmo, 1200-092 Lisboa.

History of Ruins and Archaeological Museum of Carmo

The construction of the Carmo church began in 1389, following the religious devotion of its founder, the Constable of the Kingdom, Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira. Built on the hill bordering the castle of São Jorge, it rivaled the Cathedral of Lisbon and the Convent of São Francisco.
From an early age, this religious space was considered emblematic of Lisbon and its own national identity, due to the fact that it is associated with the name of one of the most famous Portuguese heroes of the Middle Ages. By choosing the Carmo church for his burial, Nuno Álvares Pereira marked, in a decisive way, the entire history of the Gothic monument.
In 1755, the earthquake, which violently shook the city, caused serious damage to the building, worsened by the subsequent fire that almost completely destroyed its contents. In 1756, its reconstruction began, in neo-Gothic style, definitively interrupted in 1834, due to the extinction of the Religious Orders in Portugal. In the mid-19th century, with a romantic taste for ruins and ancient medieval monuments prevailing, it was decided not to continue rebuilding the building, leaving the body of the church’s naves open to the sky.
The ruins of Carmo were transformed into a memorial to the 1755 earthquake.
The Carmo Archaeological Museum was founded in 1864 by the first president of the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists, Joaquim Possidónio Narciso da Silva (1806-1896). It was the first Art and Archeology museum in the country, and was born from the objectives of safeguarding the national heritage that was deteriorating and deteriorating, as a result of the extinction of Religious Orders and the countless damages inflicted during the French Invasions and the Liberal Wars.
In the early years, it brought together countless fragments of architecture and sculpture, funerary monuments, tile panels, weapons stones, and many other objects of historical, artistic and archaeological interest. At the end of the 19th century and the end of the 20th century, important art and archeology collections from different sources entered the Museum, including the collection of Roman epigraphy, the collection of pre-Columbian ceramics and mummies and the collection originating from the excavation of the Castro de Vila Nova de São Pedro, in Azambuja (Calcolithic c.3500 BC), currently has around a thousand artefacts on permanent display.