Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga

Lonely Planet review

Housed in a grand 17th-century palace, the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga has an amazing European art collection, bursting with Portuguese works, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles and furniture. There is also a superb collection of decorative art from Africa, India, China and Japan. You can buy a guide in Portuguese or English.

Masterpiece of the collection is the Panels of São Vicente by Nuno Gonçalves, most brilliant of the Flemish-influenced 15th-century Portuguese painters. His genius was to depict contemporary society with extraordinarily naturalistic portraits, so the centuries-old faces look like ones you might meet today. The six fabulously detailed panels show a social lucky dip (from fishermen, sailors and priests, to the Duke of Bragança and his family) paying homage to São Vicente, Portugal's patron saint. The frequently reproduced central panels include Henry the Navigator.

Foreign highlights include Bosch's hallucinatory Temptation of St Anthony, populated by strange creatures and flying fish, a haunting, glowing Salomé by Lucas Cranach, St Jerome by Dürer, Works of Mercy by Brueghel, Poussin's Philistines Attacked by the Plague, Courbet's bleak Snow and Danaide by Rodin.

Artefacts from India, China and Japan include Japanese namban screens. Namban ('southern barbarians'), the Japanese name for the Portuguese who landed on Tanegaxima island in 1543, now refers to all Japanese art inspired by this encounter. The 16th-century screens show the arrival of the huge-nosed Portuguese in absorbing detail. Vastly rich inlaid Goan furniture is another treat.

Gem-smothered religious treasures include the Monstrance of Belém (1506), a reliquary made with gold brought back by Vasco da Gama on his second voyage. There's also some amazing jewellery, mostly from convent collections. A gleaming silverware display features dozens of masterpieces by the French silversmith Thomas Germain and his son François-Thomas, which were made in the late 18th century for the Portuguese court and royal family. The building's wing integrates the beautiful baroque chapel, the sole remnant of a Carmelite convent that adjoined the palace.