Museu de Marinha (Maritime Museum)

The Museu de Marinha was founded in 1863 and has occupied a purpose-built wing adjoining Jerónimos Monastery since 1962, reflecting its close thematic ties to the monastery's own commemoration of Vasco da Gama's voyages. The museum documents Portuguese maritime history from the Age of Discoveries in the 15th and 16th centuries through the modern Portuguese Navy, with a collection of scale ship models, navigational instruments including astrolabes and early compasses, and portolan charts used by Portuguese navigators. A separate pavilion houses full-size historic vessels, including royal barges used for ceremonial river processions into the 20th century and a seaplane, the Santa Cruz, that made the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic in 1922. The galleries devoted to the Age of Discoveries display replicas and models illustrating caravel and nau ship design, the vessels that enabled Portuguese voyages to India, Brazil, and beyond, alongside maps charting the expansion of Portuguese maritime knowledge. Later galleries cover the 19th and 20th-century Portuguese Navy, including its role in both World Wars and the colonial wars of the 1960s and 1970s. The museum's collection grew through transfers from the Navy's own historical holdings and donations from noble and merchant families with maritime trade connections, and periodic renovation has updated display cases and lighting in the ship-model galleries. As one of the largest maritime museums in Europe by collection size, it serves as the principal repository for Portugal's naval and seafaring history.