Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto

This museum begins with an upheaval: Portugal’s first public art museum was created in 1833 on the initiative of Pedro, Duke of Bragança. It first occupied the Convent of Santo António, displaying religious art taken from convents and works confiscated from supporters of Miguel the First. In 1911, it adopted the name of Porto sculptor António Soares dos Reis, and much of his surviving body of work belongs here.

Its signature piece is his marble sculpture O Desterrado. Since 1942, the museum has occupied the Palácio dos Carrancas, formerly the home of Manuel Mendes de Morais e Castro. The conversion made imaginative use of the building: old factory workshops became a top-lit gallery for painting, while another gallery was made for Soares dos Reis’s sculpture.

The collection now exceeds eighteen thousand objects, ranging from drawings and paintings to sculpture, prints, furniture, ceramics, glass, goldsmithing, jewellery, textiles, and archaeology. Portuguese art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the heart of the museum, with painters including Aurélia de Souza and Henrique Pousão alongside sculptors such as Teixeira Lopes. Fernando Távora’s later remodelling and extension reached completion in 2001.