Lose yourself in the Museum Quarter

One of the most celebrated names in Portuguese art died last year at the age of 87. But her museum, designed by 2011 Pritzker laureate Eduardo Souto de Moura, lives on. The collection boasts more than 600 works, including a large textile, and reflects the artist’s more than 50-year career. You will also find works by her British husband Victor Willing and good temporary exhibitions. After appreciating some art, try a refreshing turn round the garden and stretch out on the lawn for a quiet afternoon in the sun. 

Also mandatory is the Cascais Cultural Centre, dedicated since 2000 to the visual arts. It sprang from the restoration of the old Convento de Nossa Senhora da Piedade, an age-old convent built by order of the fourth Count of Monsanto, António de Castro. In addition to exhibitions on three floors, it also hosts concerts and other events like conferences and performances. There’s a café in one of its inner courtyards.

Just a few steps ahead, Cidadela Art District also invites you to appreciate art. The Cascais Fortress has been converted into a sophisticated art and exhibition space by the Pestana hotel group. There is art everywhere in the complex, even in the bedrooms and corridors of the Pestana Cidadela Cascais, one of the first hotels in Europe to have its own Art District. You’ll see galleries, studios, shops and a project room. 

Born in 1992, the museum went through several stages until reaching its present form: an institution dedicated both to preserving the stories of the local fishing community and to the study of several themes related to the sea. This interest in oceanography began back in the 19th century with King D. Carlos, as the museum itself reveals. Each room deals with a different subject. Here you may learn more about life on the open ocean, with depictions of whales, sharks and other impressive species. You will also learn the history of fishing in Cascais through the costumes, ships and stories of fishermen; and there’s something as well about the location of Cascais in the shipwreck routes, from which several interesting objects were gathered. The museum building functioned for several years as the headquarters of the Sporting Clube de Cascais.

The current Duarte Pinto Coelho House occupies the former House of the Guards of the Castro Guimarães Counts Palace - what a great life aristocrats used to have. Nowadays, it displays the collections of famed interior decorator Duarte Pinto Coelho, a “cascaense” who lived a large part of his life in Madrid. This is also the home of the Earl of Barcelona Chair of the Dukes of Soria Science and Hispanic Culture Foundation in Portugal. You can visit the temporary exhibition, until Janurary next year, on “Liturgical Vestments”, with clergy clothing from the 16th to the 20th century: stoles, chasubles, body pouches and more, in materials such as gold, satin or silk.

Right next door to the Town Museum, the Roman cetariae – small tanks used to salt fish and make fish sauces – are also
worth a visit.