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Museu Calouste GulbenkianOpens in a new tab

Avenidas Novas · Museums

The Museu Calouste Gulbenkian stands at Avenida de Berna 45A, 1067-001 Lisboa, in the Avenidas Novas neighbourhood. It opens from Wednesday to Monday, between 10:00 and 18:00. Sources describe it as a calm cultural refuge set in the heart of Lisbon, away from the busy tourist areas of Belém and the Baixa, and many regard it as among Europe's finest private art museums. The institution occupies a garden campus of 7.5 hectares and rests on two cultural pillars. The first is the Founder's Collection, shown in the main museum building. It draws on the personal collection assembled by Gulbenkian, and roughly 1,000 to 2,000 pieces are on display at any one time. Rather than sorting works by medium, the galleries follow chronology and geography, so a visit moves through thousands of years of human creativity. Gulbenkian's collection is described as eclectic and meticulously curated, and the display is arranged so that a visitor can walk through it without a break between eras. The material falls into several areas. Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Mesopotamian art brings together mummy masks, ancient coins, Roman medallions and ancient glassware. Islamic art includes Persian carpets, Iznik ceramics and mosque lamps dating from the 12th to the 18th centuries. European art runs from the Renaissance through the Impressionists, with works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Manet, Degas and Renoir. A dedicated room presents jewellery, glass art and tiaras by René Lalique, an Art Nouveau master. The Persian carpets are called exquisite, the Roman medallions stunning, and the Lalique room jaw-dropping. The second pillar is the Modern Art Centre, known as CAM, which sits in a separate building on the same grounds. It concentrates on twentieth-century and contemporary Portuguese art and is described as holding the largest collection of that kind. Alongside it, the centre hosts major international temporary exhibitions and rotating installations of sound, video and design. It stands apart from the main museum building yet shares its garden setting. Descriptions of the museum stress its human scale. It is called intimately scaled, brilliantly lit and peaceful, in contrast to cavernous national museums that can induce museum fatigue. The same sources say the 5,000 years of art can be viewed in a fluid journey without that fatigue. In short, the museum combines a lush garden campus with two collections under separate roofs, one of historic range and one of recent Portuguese art.