Rain, heat or a slow Sunday: these are the museums we head to when the kids need more than a walk. Expect hands-on science, big machines up close and collections with enough story to hold a school-age kid. Some are built for children, others just have the right rooms, so each card says what a kid does there and who it suits.
Pavilion of Knowledge is the Ciência Viva science center on the old Expo 98 site, and every exhibit is made to be touched. TCHARAN! is a science circus with a mirror maze, a musical floor and the Unfinished House, where kids in hard hats work cranes and pulleys. In Fishanário, a child's drawing of a sea creature is scanned and swims into a projected ocean.
The University of Lisbon's science and natural history museum fills the old Escola Politécnica building in Príncipe Real. The standout for kids is Among Dinosaurs, built around Allosaurus fossils dug up near Pombal, with skulls, bones and dig-site displays.
Other halls cover Portugal's wildlife and landscapes, and the 19th-century Laboratorio Chimico teaching lab is part of the visit. The Lisbon Botanical Garden sits next door.
Quake is a walk-through museum about the earthquake, tsunami and fires that leveled Lisbon on November 1, 1755. Visitors move through ten themed rooms, from a recreated street of the lost city to a simulator where the seats shake while fire and the tsunami play out on the walls.
Interactive stations explain how earthquakes and tsunamis start, and what to do when one hits.
The Carris Museum tells the story of Lisbon's trams and buses inside the old Santo Amaro depot. A 1901 tram drives visitors between its three spaces. The first covers the company's history, with a model of the Santa Justa Lift built in 1892. The second fills 2,000 m² of former workshop halls with horse-drawn cars, yellow trams, buses and a ticket printing shop. The third holds vehicles waiting for restoration.
Portugal's sea history, told through scale models of ships used since the 15th century, from caravels to modern warships, plus navigation instruments, maps and paintings. The museum sits in the west wing of the Jerónimos Monastery.
A modern annex holds the big pieces: full-size royal barges with carved, gilded prows, the Santa Cruz seaplane that crossed the Atlantic in the 1920s, and the navy's first aircraft, a flying boat.
The Portuguese Navy's planetarium sits beside the Navy Museum and Jerónimos Monastery in Belém. Its 25-meter dome turns into a night sky when the Carl Zeiss projector fills it with stars, planets and nebulae, and some shows are led live by a presenter.
Younger kids get animated stories like Captain Schnuppes. Older kids get shows on the Sun, galaxies and how sailors once navigated by the stars.
The Portuguese Air Force's aviation museum fills the old hangars at the Granja do Marquês air base near Sintra. The main hangar lines up 42 aircraft in date order, from early biplanes to jet fighters. Three hangars from the 1920s hold small civil planes, a multimedia auditorium, aircraft flown in the Portuguese Colonial War, and early jet trainers.
The museum holds more than 70 historic vehicles from four centuries: gilded ceremonial coaches covered in carving and painting, sedan chairs, litters, and a set of small carriages built for royal children. Older kids stop at the Regicide Landau, the open carriage King Carlos I was riding in when he was shot in 1908.
Nothing can be touched, so it suits kids who enjoy looking closely.
Set in the former São Julião church, the Bank of Portugal's museum traces money from the first Western coins to modern banknotes. Kids can touch a 12.6 kg gold bar behind an old vault door, virtually mint a coin and print a banknote with their own face, and look at banknote fibers under a microscope.
A stretch of King Dinis's medieval city wall is preserved inside.
Rain, heat or a slow Sunday: these are the museums we head to when the kids need more than a walk. Expect hands-on science, big machines up close and collections with enough story to hold a school-age kid. Some are built for children, others just have the right rooms, so each card says what a kid does there and who it suits.
Pavilion of Knowledge is the Ciência Viva science center on the old Expo 98 site, and every exhibit is made to be touched. TCHARAN! is a science circus with a mirror maze, a musical floor and the Unfinished House, where kids in hard hats work cranes and pulleys. In Fishanário, a child's drawing of a sea creature is scanned and swims into a projected ocean.
The University of Lisbon's science and natural history museum fills the old Escola Politécnica building in Príncipe Real. The standout for kids is Among Dinosaurs, built around Allosaurus fossils dug up near Pombal, with skulls, bones and dig-site displays.
Other halls cover Portugal's wildlife and landscapes, and the 19th-century Laboratorio Chimico teaching lab is part of the visit. The Lisbon Botanical Garden sits next door.
Quake is a walk-through museum about the earthquake, tsunami and fires that leveled Lisbon on November 1, 1755. Visitors move through ten themed rooms, from a recreated street of the lost city to a simulator where the seats shake while fire and the tsunami play out on the walls.
Interactive stations explain how earthquakes and tsunamis start, and what to do when one hits.
The Carris Museum tells the story of Lisbon's trams and buses inside the old Santo Amaro depot. A 1901 tram drives visitors between its three spaces. The first covers the company's history, with a model of the Santa Justa Lift built in 1892. The second fills 2,000 m² of former workshop halls with horse-drawn cars, yellow trams, buses and a ticket printing shop. The third holds vehicles waiting for restoration.
Portugal's sea history, told through scale models of ships used since the 15th century, from caravels to modern warships, plus navigation instruments, maps and paintings. The museum sits in the west wing of the Jerónimos Monastery.
A modern annex holds the big pieces: full-size royal barges with carved, gilded prows, the Santa Cruz seaplane that crossed the Atlantic in the 1920s, and the navy's first aircraft, a flying boat.
The Portuguese Navy's planetarium sits beside the Navy Museum and Jerónimos Monastery in Belém. Its 25-meter dome turns into a night sky when the Carl Zeiss projector fills it with stars, planets and nebulae, and some shows are led live by a presenter.
Younger kids get animated stories like Captain Schnuppes. Older kids get shows on the Sun, galaxies and how sailors once navigated by the stars.
The Portuguese Air Force's aviation museum fills the old hangars at the Granja do Marquês air base near Sintra. The main hangar lines up 42 aircraft in date order, from early biplanes to jet fighters. Three hangars from the 1920s hold small civil planes, a multimedia auditorium, aircraft flown in the Portuguese Colonial War, and early jet trainers.
The museum holds more than 70 historic vehicles from four centuries: gilded ceremonial coaches covered in carving and painting, sedan chairs, litters, and a set of small carriages built for royal children. Older kids stop at the Regicide Landau, the open carriage King Carlos I was riding in when he was shot in 1908.
Nothing can be touched, so it suits kids who enjoy looking closely.
Set in the former São Julião church, the Bank of Portugal's museum traces money from the first Western coins to modern banknotes. Kids can touch a 12.6 kg gold bar behind an old vault door, virtually mint a coin and print a banknote with their own face, and look at banknote fibers under a microscope.
A stretch of King Dinis's medieval city wall is preserved inside.
