Museus e Monumentos de Portugal recognizes that “o outlook for the year is not very encouraging in terms of equipment [sob alçada da empresa] “, so they are “trying to design communication strategies here that allow us to take people to other places.”
The president of This Wednesday, he was concerned about the fact that several equipment supervised by the public company in Lisbon will be closed for works in 2025, coinciding with a tourism campaign focused on heritage.
In a hearing at the Lisbon Municipal Assembly as part of the preparation of the “Least Visited City” report, the president of Museums and Monuments of Portugal (MMP), Alexandre Pais, informed that in 2025, in addition to the already closed National Archeology Museum, the National Museum of Costume and the National Museum of Music (which should open in Mafra next year), the National Museum of Theater and Dance, the National Museum of Ancient Art and the National Museum of Tile, for rehabilitation works within the scope of the
In this context, Alexandre Pais highlighted that the fact that Turismo de Portugal intends to focus on Culture, in its various aspects, to attract visitors from 2025 onwards, is a source of concern for the public company, and warned of the need for dialogue between partners.
“We are very worried”
“We are very worried, even if the campaign starts next year, we will have many facilities closed next year”, he stated, pointing out, in response to Lisbon’s municipal deputies, that there is “no strategy, at the moment, agreed with Tourism of Portugal to face this issue”.
The president of MMP highlighted that “the outlook for the year is not very encouraging in terms of equipment [sob alçada da empresa] “, so they are “trying to design communication strategies here that allow people to go to other places to try to address this issue.”
Faced with the option of seeking to captivate tourists on the cultural side, Alexandre Pais said:
“When we already have spaces completely at the limit of their capacity, as is the case with [Mosteiro dos] Jerônimos, which is indeed a very worrying case, the Torre de Belém and even Azulejo, which are exceeding their capacity, we have to have an alternative here”.
Alexandre Pais, in office for around six months, welcomed the invitation to participate in this discussion, at the Lisbon Municipal Assembly, and was available to dialogue with more partners:
“Because the solution is not just with us, it has to be much broader and we have to have partners to be able to solve it.”
Ideas for the future
In this sense, the president of MMP stated that they are exploring several ideas, particularly in the winter period, to be able to fully implement next summer, from the distribution of visitors, in spaces such as the Jerónimos Monastery, by ‘slots’ to throughout the day, to the suggestion of having public transport aimed at circulation between cultural facilities spread across the city.
The person responsible for the public company, former director of the National Tile Museum, said that there are several museums that are less used than they could be, from the Chiado Museum, especially due to its location, to the National Ethnology Museum, which can come to create synergies with the Terra de Miranda Museum, in Miranda do Douro, even in the logic of being able to take visitors to that Trás-os-Montes region.
“We are in a phase of finding strategies”, highlighted Alexandre Pais, who highlighted the idea that there are not too many tourists, they are poorly distributed, and it is necessary to find solutions to carry out this distribution, when the prospect of a new airport will be the to attract more than double the number of visitors to Portugal today.
More than five million visitors in 2023
Museums, monuments and palaces, since January under the management of MMP, received 5,157,360 visitors in 2023according to data from the public company released in August.
The 2023 statistics “show that, in the 38 national museums, monuments and palaces now managed by MMP, there was an increase in visitors of around 10% compared to the previous year, which represents around 444 thousand more visits throughout the year” .
Among the most visited cultural facilities in 2023, the Jerónimos Monastery, in Lisbon, leads with 965,526 entries, followed by the Sagres Fortress, with 427,817 visitors, and the Guimarães Castle, with 387,570.
