Lisbon’s National Museum of Ancient Art reopens in November

Lisbon’s National Museum of Ancient Art (MNAA) will partially reopen to the public on November 21, more than a year after closing for major renovation work.

The reopening weekend will begin at 3pm on Saturday, November 21, with a programme including the unveiling of the refurbished floor dedicated to international decorative arts, temporary exhibitions, guided tours, workshops and concerts.

Activities will continue until 8pm on Saturday and from 10am to 6pm on Sunday, November 22.

Admission will be free from November 21 until December 1, after which the museum’s normal ticket prices will return.

The MNAA has been closed since September 29, 2025, while undergoing works financed through Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).

The museum received around €8.5 million in PRR funding for the project, which included conservation and refurbishment of the building’s north façade, renovation of the roofs of the former Alvor Palace wing and the restoration of the Capela das Albertas.

The programme also included improvements to the auditorium and a complete renewal of the exhibition devoted to international decorative arts on the second floor.

Although its Lisbon building was closed, the museum remained active through the initiative “O MNAA está Aqui” – “The MNAA is Here”, which took pieces from its collection to museums and cultural institutions around Portugal, including the Azores and Madeira.

Founded in 1884, the MNAA holds around 40,000 works and is home to Portugal’s most important public collection of Portuguese and European painting, sculpture and decorative arts spanning the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Its collection also includes art connected with Portugal’s maritime expansion and the largest number of works officially classified as “national treasures” in a Portuguese museum, as well as the country’s largest collection of Portuguese furniture.

Among its best-known works are Nuno Gonçalves’ Panels of Saint Vincent, the Belém Monstrance, the Namban Screens, Hieronymus Bosch’s The Temptations of Saint Anthony and Albrecht Dürer’s Saint Jerome.

The Panels of Saint Vincent have themselves been undergoing a major conservation and restoration programme since 2020.

Source: Lusa