Museu Nacional Soares Dos Reis

A short walk west of Cordoaria lands you at Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis. The town’s most comprehensive art collection, it ranges from Neolithic carvings to Portugal’s take on modernism and is housed in the formidable Palácio das Carrancas. Requisitioned by Napoleonic invaders, the neoclassical palace was abandoned so rapidly that the future Duke of Wellington found an unfinished banquet in the dining hall. Transformed into a museum of fine and decorative arts in 1940, its best works date from the 19th century, including sculpture by António Soares dos Reis (see especially his famous O Desterrado, The Exile) and António Teixeira Lopes, and the naturalistic paintings of Henrique Pousão and António Silva Porto.