Housed in a substantial purpose-built modern museum building on Avenida da India in the historic central Belem district of Lisbon, the Museu Nacional dos Coches is the principal Portuguese national collection of historic royal carriages and ceremonial coaches. The current substantial new museum building opened on 23 May 2015 and is one of the principal contemporary purpose-built museum facilities anywhere in central Portugal, with the principal exhibition gallery housing around seventy individual historic royal carriages from the substantial Portuguese royal collections. The wider National Coach Museum collection was originally established in 1905 by Queen Amelia of Portugal, the wife of King Carlos I. The original substantial collection was originally housed in the substantial Picadeiro Real royal riding school at the historic Belem Palace, immediately east of the current new museum building. The original substantial Picadeiro Real building continues to house a substantial supplementary collection of around twenty individual royal carriages and remains open as a supplementary museum venue alongside the principal new 2015 museum building. The substantial principal new museum building was designed by the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, working with the Portuguese architect Ricardo Bak Gordon. The substantial principal museum building is one of the principal contemporary architectural projects of the wider central Lisbon, with the substantial elevated reinforced concrete structure raising the principal exhibition gallery floor approximately ten metres above the surrounding street level. The substantial total construction cost was approximately fifty million euros across the principal 2008 to 2015 construction period. The principal museum collection covers approximately seventy individual historic royal carriages spanning the principal centuries of the wider Portuguese royal carriage tradition. The principal individual highlights of the wider collection include the substantial Coach of King Joao V, the famous Coronation Coach of King Joseph I completed in around 1750, the substantial Coach of the Embassy to Pope Clement XI completed in 1716 and famously sent to Rome by King Joao V, and the various supplementary later eighteenth and nineteenth-century royal carriages associated with the various principal Portuguese kings. The supplementary historic Picadeiro Real royal riding school building immediately east of the principal new museum building continues to house a substantial supplementary collection of around twenty individual additional royal carriages. The principal supplementary historic building dates from 1726 during the reign of King Joao V and is one of the principal surviving early eighteenth-century royal building complexes of the wider central Lisbon. The substantial principal historic building was substantially renovated during the 2015 opening of the new principal museum building and continues to operate as a supplementary museum venue.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Avenida da India 136, Lisbon, Portugal

Opening Date: 23/05/2015