Museu de Marinha

A journey through the Golden Age of Discovery. ​I was absolutely thrilled by the exhibits here. The museum does an incredible job of preserving the maritime heritage of Portugal. ​The highlight for me was the fascinating map displaying the sea routes discovered by the great Portuguese navigators. Seeing the visual representation of how these explorers connected the continents is truly humbling and educational. It perfectly captures the scale of their achievements. ​From the detailed ship models to the navigation instruments, everything is presented with great care. A must-visit in Lisbon for anyone who appreciates history and exploration.

We visited the Museu de Marinha and really enjoyed how clearly it tells the story of Portugal’s long and influential maritime journey. The museum offers a close look at the country’s naval heritage—from the Age of Discoveries to modern seafaring—through beautifully preserved ships, navigation instruments, maps, and royal barges. What we especially appreciated was how educational the visit felt without being overwhelming. It’s a great place to connect historical events with the broader story of exploration, trade routes, and Portugal’s relationship with the sea. A big plus: it’s an excellent option on a rainy day. We stayed dry, learned a lot, and spent quality time exploring at a comfortable pace. For anyone interested in history, navigation, or simply looking for a meaningful indoor activity in Lisbon, this museum is a solid recommendation. Tip: Combine it with a walk around Belém when the weather clears—it makes for a perfectly balanced day of culture and leisure.

Really enjoyed the Maritime Museum — a great place to explore Portugal’s deep connection to the sea. The exhibits are well organized, with beautiful ship models, navigation instruments, and artifacts from the Age of Discoveries. The highlight is the large hall with full-size royal barges and historic boats — truly impressive and worth the visit on its own. The museum is spacious, calm, and easy to walk through. It’s a perfect stop if you’re already visiting the Jerónimos Monastery next door. A great mix of history, culture, and impressive craftsmanship. Highly recommended for both adults and kids.

Worth a visit here if you're interested in maritime matters... or it's raining! Reasonable entry price and enough to keep you occupied for an hour. After the main museum information exhibits the display hall houses some 20 vessels including the Royal Barge. Would like to have seen more about the modern naval links Portugal has and the thriving shipping industry but otherwise, still worth a visit. To note in mid Feb 2026 tickets were 50% discounted due to ongoing works meaning some exhibitions were closed.

Great museum with an excellent exhibition on the history of Portuguese seafaring. Very engaging, full of interesting details and curiosities, and just the right duration for a visit. Inspiring and well worth seeing.

I felt ambivalent visiting this museum. On the one hand, it's full of interesting materials including a lot of ship models and replicas of maps, instruments, etc. On the other hand, the way in which things are contextualized is very much white washing. There's almost no acknowledgement of Portugal's role in pioneering the transatlantic slave trade or the violent colonization of parts of Africa and Asia. The overall impression you get is a single-minded celebration of Portugal as a nation/kingdom that charted the paths for globalization. There's indeed one panel that mentions the slave trade but the description downplays the extent to which Portugal traded human beings and instead emphasizes the abolition later on. Overall, it's not a well curated museum. It's still worth a visit (it wasn't expensive). The woman at the front desk was also extremely unfriendly. She was sitting down doing her own stuff when we entered. No greetings until we intiated the interaction. And she stared at me with a hostile look the whole time although i was being polite and smiling. How odd!

Nice museum to see nautical history, technology, history of fishing vessels of the area, exploration and spice trade. Plenty of models of ships to understand variations in designs and purpose.

Very nice museum to learn about the rich naval history of Portugal. It’s very well maintained, and the exhibits are explained in both Portuguese and English. We loved it, including my 11-year-old. What surprised us even more was that the entrance was free, maybe it was just that day, I’m not sure. Another great thing is that it’s not overcrowded like most other Lisbon attractions. It’s a must-visit, unless you really don’t like museums.

The Maritime Museum showcases the history and contributions of Portuguese navigators. My husband and I toured this museum for 8 euros each. In about one hour, we saw dozens of model and life-sized ships, canons, statues, paintings, coins, informational plaques, the king's and queen's cabins, a gift shop, and more. I felt most interested in the life-sized ships. Overall, I think that this museum is worth a visit if you are already in the area.

We were fortunate to come here as a Gate 1 tour. With tours you can skip the lines, so I like that about them, but of course you are on everyone else's schedule. I was torn between admiration of a culture playing to it's strengths (being surrounded by water has it's perks), and Derek L's view of colonialism. There was exactly 1 acknowledgement of how the country benefitted from slavery. It's a slippery slope of acknowledging how one acquired wealth but also realizing it occurred at a major violation of human rights. The room of boats was awesome, esp being able to view it from above on a balcony. The gift shop had some nice holiday themed items.

The Museu de Marinha (Maritime Museum) was one of the highlights of time in Lisbon. The Portuguese have such a rich maritime history, with all of their exploration, colonization, and conquest. And while the colonization and conquest was not the highlight of their history, it makes for a great museum. They have statues of the explorers, models of hundreds of ships from the early days of exploration through modern ships and warships. At the end of your walk through the museum they have a very large exhibit of royal ships and then sea planes. There is way too much to see in one visit, and I admit, it was tiring when we reached the end. However, it was fascinating.

We did not want to wait in the very very long line for the monastery and saw tis on the end and wandered over and loved it! Very informative, great history, and amazing display. You have several parts, the museum proper with the artifacts, then the area with ships and planes and it is all worth exploring. We spent about an hour total. If you are into naval history, military history, or just a history nerd over all like I am, you will enjoy this museum. I had zero interest in going in and ended up reading everything and learning a lot! The Portuguese were at the forefront of maritime exploration and this is a great display of it. There was a small exhibit to the Portuguese war my father served in and it was great to learn more about it in a fairly neutral display for such a horrific war. They did a good job not glorifying it but presenting it neutrally as opposed to the other displays.

Thanks to a Tauck tour, I had the opportunity to visit the Maritime museum without lines. What a well thought out museum with wonderful exhibits. Our guide from Tauck was also very informative which made the visit much more enjoyable. I suggest a guide for this museum so you can really understand what you are actually viewing. I also enjoyed taking pictures freely in this museum which is not always the case in many other museums. This was my favorite museum in Lisbon. Don't miss it if you are visiting Lisbon for the first time.

Great Portuguese explorers once dominated the oceans of the world and this is a great place to understand the depth of their contributions. The collection of artifacts here are priceless to a military or naval historian. They also have a nice collection of paintings that depict many of the military happenings of this time period. The museum is organized nicely because it is currently run by the Portuguese Navy. This is a must stop for all history buffs.

Jarring layout and basically a tone-deaf monument to the excesses of Portuguese colonialism. I've been to a few national maritime museums (UK Greenwich, Netherlands Amsterdam, Denmark Helsingor) and there's always a level of national bias, which is to be expected. That said, the others made some apology or explained the colonial exploits in a modern lens. The UK Museum of Naval History has a large exhibit on the slave trade and one on the Opium Wars that cast the Empire in harsher light. None of that is to be found at the Portuguese naval museum. All the exhibits cast Portugal in the brightest of lights: "Conquering the Atlantic," glossing over Portugal's decline between the 1600s and 1800s, and most disgustingly, glorification of their Colonial Wars in Angola and the Congo Basin in the 1970s. There's little context given and no narrative as to why the items on display matter. Most exhibits have plain text explaining whatever model of a warship it is, or the fancy medal or portrait. The layout is confusing: the end of the Golden Age of Discovery drops you off in the middle of the 1800s and the Napoleonic Wars, where Portugal played a little brother role to Great Britain. There's no logical flow to the room layout: to exit, you have to backtrack through exhibits you've already seen. The only redeeming aspect that makes this a two-star museum is the renovated Age of Discovery exhibits. It strikes a strong narrative about why Henry the Navigator and future kings desired expanding the kingdom, and is a modern museum on par with other strong museums. It's the first exhibit, and it gives a glimmer of hope that this museum might become better with future renovations.

Very disappointed because I expected it to be much bigger and more interesting for a museum of such a seafaring nation as Portugal

Four stars for the €0 admission and decent collection, although they should have at least one full-sized Portuguese galleon on display to make it really worth your while. The boat display in the separate building was underwhelming.

Wonderfully laid out and spacious museum with interesting and informative displays as well as useful English descriptions of most exhibits. The exhibits include ship replicas, uniforms, navigation equipment, and of course information about the golden age of Portuguese exploration. Sort of off the beaten track (of the more famous church, former monastery, monument of the discoverers, and coach museum) but as interesting as any of those. One room is devoted to exploration, one to fishing, one to modern shipping and military, one to royal yachts, one to royal barges. All in all a fascinating trip down memory lane about Da Gama and Dias with lots of new information