Soares dos Reis National Museum

Established in 1833, the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto is Portugal’s first public art museum, housing a vast collection of 19th and 20th-century Portuguese art, including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and furniture. Located in the historic Carrancas Palace, the museum offers visitors a comprehensive insight into the nation’s artistic heritage.

Planning your visit

The Soares dos Reis was Portugal's first public art museum, founded in 1833, and it occupies the Carrancas Palace — a late eighteenth-century merchant family's house that later served as a royal residence and, during the Peninsular War, as Marshal Soult's headquarters before Wellington drove the French out of Porto in 1809.

The collection is named for António Soares dos Reis, the nineteenth-century sculptor whose O Desterrado (The Exile) is its emblem: a seated marble youth in an attitude of profound homesickness, carved while the artist was studying in Rome, and one of the finest Portuguese sculptures of the century. Around it sit Portuguese painting of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ceramics, glass, furniture, textiles and decorative arts.

For visitors, the museum offers something Porto's better-known attractions do not: a sustained look at Portuguese art on its own terms rather than as a footnote to Spanish or Italian traditions.

It sits west of the centre, walkable from the Clérigos tower.

Bookable options include entry tickets and private guided tours, which help place the collection within a national art history most visitors arrive knowing nothing about. Current availability is listed below.