the house a captain left to the city
There are collections that end up in storage. This one ended up in a will. Francisco Almeida Moreira, captain and director of the Museu Grão Vasco, decided that his house and everything in it would go to Viseu. The council honoured the agreement and opened to the public exactly what he left: furniture, paintings, porcelain, books.
The museum occupies the Captain's original house, designed by Raul Lino, the architect who turned the idea of the Portuguese house into a language of his own. To enter the Museu Almeida Moreira is to walk through the personal taste of someone with access to Silva Porto, Columbano, Malhoa and Marques de Oliveira, all hung where he wanted.
The ceramics collection is the largest in the space, with pieces from the country's various faience production centres. It's not monotonous: the geographic breadth of the collection lets you grasp differences between origins that are usually grouped anonymously under "Portuguese pottery".
Viseu has bigger, better-known museums. This is the one that shows you how the people who created them lived.
what you'll find inside
- paintings by central names of Portuguese naturalism
- faience from various national production centres, gathered by a collector with criteria
- the domestic space of Raul Lino intact as a backdrop
- a temporary exhibition on the Captain's path as a collector
