Museu Arqueológico do Carmo
The Carmo church was built in 1389, prompted by the religious aspirations and devotion of its founder, the Constable of the Kingdom, D. Nuno Álvares Pereira. It was built on the hill next the hill of the S. Jorge Castle, and its grandeur and monumentality rival Lisbon’s Sé Cathedral and the Convent of S. Francisco. From its earliest years, this religious space was considered to symbolise the city of Lisbon and the national identity of Portugal, due to the fact that it is associated with one of the most famous Portuguese heroes of the Middle Ages. By choosing the Carmo church for his tomb, Nuno Álvares Pereira decisively left his mark on the whole history of the Gothic monument.
Various additions and alterations were made to the church and convent through the years, adapting to new architectural and decorative tastes and styles, and it was transformed into one of the richest and most powerful construction in Lisbon. In 1755, the earthquake, which hit the city violently, caused serious damage to the building which was worsened by the subsequent fire that almost totally destroyed its interior. In 1756, its reconstruction began in the Neo-Gothic style, but stopped permanently in 1834 due to the abolition of the religious orders in Portugal. The pillars and arches of the naves date from this period of reconstruction and are genuine examples of experimental Neo-Gothic architecture. In the mid-19th century, a romantic taste for ruins and for old medieval monuments prevailed, and it was decided not to continue the reconstruction of the building, leaving the body of the church’s naves open to the sky. A magical scenario of ruins was created, which so pleased the nineteenth century aesthetes and today still enchants its contemporaries today. The Carmo Ruins were transformed into a memorial to the earthquake of 1755.
The Museu Arqueológico do Carmo, is installed there and was founded in 1864 by the first chairman of the Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses, Joaquim Possidónio Narciso da Silva (1806-1896). It was the first museum of Art and Archeology in the country, and was created to protect Portugal’s national heritage, which was increasingly dilapidated and run down, as a consequence of the abolition of the Religious Orders and the extensive damage caused during the French Invasions and the Liberal Wars.
During the first few years of its existence, it brought together a collection of numerous fragments of architecture and sculpture, as well as important sculptural funeral monuments, panels of decorative tiles, coats of arms and other objects of historical-artistic and archaeological interest. At the end of the 19th century and the third quarter of the 20th century, important collections of art and archaeology from different places entered the Museum, and included the collection of Roman epigraphy, the collection of Pre-Columbian ceramics and mummies and the original collection from the excavation Castro de Vila Nova de S. Pedro, in Azambuja (Calcolytic about 3500 BC.), today with about a thousand artefacts in a permanent exhibition.
For more than a century of its existence and service to the scientific community and general public, the Museu Arqueólogo do Carmo, has been cloaked in its “romantic aura”, offering a space for enjoying aesthetics, culture and contemplation in the heart of central Lisbon.
