Top Lisbon Museums: Museu Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum)

Hello, visitors!

I have recently been for the first time in one of the top rated museums in Lisbon: the National Tile Museum!

If you’ve ever been in the city, ceramic tiles are a very characteristic Portuguese art, and you can find them all over the country in walls, park seats, fountains, train stations... We call them “azulejos” (ah-zoo-leigh-jews). It’s kind of a funny word.

The museum is about a 15 minute drive from the old Lisbon centre. Now, with the pandemic restrictions, it is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm. The entry fee is 5 euros in most cases, but for residents in Portugal it has free entrance on Sundays until 2pm, so we took this opportunity to visit it last Sunday morning. You can check more fees on their website.

The museum is located in the former Convent of Madre Deus, and it became a National Museum in 1980. Nowadays, it not only showcases some very artistic tiles that date back all the way from the second half of the 15th century, but it also works on restoring many others. It also has a few ceramic sculptures and other pieces throughout the museum, and some parts of the old convent can also be spotted!

I am not an art expert, so I don’t know much about the techniques, the representations or anything like that. The permanent exhibition will enlighten you on some tile manufacturing and painting techniques, and along the remaining exhibition you will see a lot of the art that was made throughout the years, all the way until today. I know my favorite one was a big panoramic piece they have of old Lisbon, where we can recognize some of the city’s icons - this one is called Great View of Lisbon.

The museum is very Instagram and Pinterest famous due to its tile-covered cloisters. There are two different cloister areas in the museum where you can frame a beautiful image for your social media, and if you’re as lucky as we were, they won’t have many people around and you can easily get the place to yourself.

Inside the building you also have a restaurant and sitting area that you can use if you want to take a break from your visit.

Although we didn’t get the chance, the museum also offers some activities, including painting a tile, which is something I would love to have done!

Overall, even for someone who doesn’t understand much about art besides looking at it, I enjoyed visiting this museum very much. It has a very Portuguese essence that I’m sure visitors will like to add to their Lisbon trip!