Lisbon, Jan 29, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's National Archaeological Museum (MNA) plans to begin archaeological excavation work in the interior of its Lisbon home next month, followed by the restoration of the façades, as part of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), the national plan for spending post-pandemic funds from the European Union, its director told Lusa on Wednesday.
According to the museum's director, António Carvalho, the MNA, which has been closed to the general public since April 2022, is due to begin these two projects in the programme in the first quarter, and the third, the complete refurbishment of the building's interior, by the end of the first half of the year.
"We're going to start the programme of archaeological excavations inside the museum, which is obligatory by law, and then we're also going to start the contract for the conservation of the south, north and west façades of the MNA, in the nineteenth-century wing of the Jerónimos Monastery, which are very dark and need a restoration operation,’ he said in an interview with the Lusa news agency.
On Thursday, the century-old museum space that occupies almost the entire façade of the Jerónimos Monastery facing the Praça do Império square in Belém, in western Lisbon, will exceptionally reopen to the public to discuss the museum programme of the future museum to be recreated after the extensive refurbishment work.
The aim, according to the director, is to "listen to the concerns, ideas and expectations of all those interested in this project" - whose completion has been postponed until the new date set by the EU for the conclusion of the RRP, which has been extended from 2025 to 2026.
"The PRR is a unique opportunity, and this type of intervention is rare in Portugal," Carvalho told Lusa about the project, which in the last reprogramming, in March 2024, allocated a total of €32,692,636.60 to the MNA (initially it had been €24.5 million).
Several professionals and specialists from the archaeology, museology, management, programming and education sectors interested in the future of the museum founded in 1893 on the initiative of archaeologist and ethnographer José Leite de Vasconcelos have been invited to the day-long meeting to share and debate ideas.
"The guests will be at the meeting as moderators and to answer any questions the public may have," said the director of the “museum of the territories” as it is sometimes known, which has existed for 130 years and has around 7,000 pieces in its inventory, many of them classified as national treasures.
"We must emphasise that all this is happening because there was European solidarity in response to a virus," Carvalho said, referring to Covid-19. "If it didn't exist, there wouldn't be this programme."
Asked about the current state of play of the project, Carvalho said that "so far the preparation for the large-scale work has been carried out, namely the complete dismantling of all the exhibitions and the reinstallation of the services and collections in other interior spaces."
All the contents "have been transferred from the upper floor to the west gallery, and the exhibitions have been dismantled, with the removal of glass, prefabricated buildings and the old museums so that the reconstruction work can begin" by the end of June, he added.
After the RRP works are launched, the installation, assembly and opening phases of the museum will follow; these are "completely different processes that will culminate in a new reality" in the space, with an archaeological collection of various types, from stone, glass, ceramics, metal and books from 3,178 archaeological sites in all the country's districts.
Laboratories have also been set up in eight shipping containers attached to the outside of the building, with specialists to preventively monitor the state of conservation of the archaeological collection.
Carvalho and his team of 22 decided to stay at the museum during the work to monitor the whole process closely: "This gives us great security to better manage the risk. Every day we are with the goods, every day we check the air conditioners, the dehumidifiers where the metals are, or the Egyptian collection.
"This presence is extremely important because these works and disasters often go hand in hand," he explained. "The work increases the risk. That's what happened in the case of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris."
A fire broke out in Notre Dame in 2019 during conservation work, causing serious destruction.
Although the museum has been closed to the general public for almost three years, it has continued to receive organised visits from university and school groups, associations and organisations, with whom they wanted to maintain contact.
"The assembly of a work, the dismantling of a museum and its transfer is so fascinating that many people have been delighted," he said. "It's unusual to do this to a national museum: to dismantle it entirely and transfer the contents to another space to be remodelled."
On the other hand, the loan of pieces for exhibitions in Portugal and abroad was maintained, with the co-production of exhibitions, namely ‘Energias. Movimento Perpétuo’ (Energies. Perpetual Movement) at Lisbon's Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) and ’Idolos. Miradas Milenares' (Idols. Millennial Gazes) at the Archaeological Museum of Alicante, in southern Spain.
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Lusa
