Museums and Palaces

Santa Maria de Lamas Museum was founded in the 1950s by Henrique Amorim, a great connoisseur of art, who donated the immense collection that he had built up over his lifetime to the Casa do Povo de Santa Maria de Lamas.

The highly varied categories of his collection are distributed throughout 16 rooms of a building that was also donated by the Museum’s founder. The collection of sacred art deserves a special mention because of its sheer size, as well as the quality and variety of the pieces that it includes. Among these, it is possible to identify sub-collections of gilded woodcarvings, paintings and liturgical furniture, with an exceptionally large number of oratories and religious images, including a diversified group of exhibits ranging from statues of saints to more erudite pieces.

The museum also has collections of ethnography, ceramics, civil furniture, weapons, “the founder’s iconography” and a curious collection of artistic and popular articles made from cork, which gave rise to the other name by which the museum is also known – the “Cork Museum”.

Over the last few years, the museum has renewed its relationship with the general public, allowing for a more clearly contextualised access to both the pieces and the collections. The museum is always ready to consider new explorations and researches into its exhibits, and has a vast programme of events and activities designed to attract ever more visitors.