THE MAC COLLECTIONS

The Museu Arqueológico do Carmo was founded in1864 by the Associação dos Arqueológos Portugueses (1863) in the ruins of Lisbon’s former Carmo church and, for the first few years, functioned as a kind of “museum of salvaged objects” whose collections included various pieces of archaeology, architecture, and sculpture, or fragments of monuments in the most varied artistic types, such as coats of arms and panels of decorative tiles, among other objects of historical-artistic and archaeological interest.

Their disparate provenance produced a very eclectic collection, particularly the collection which came in at the end of the 19th century and the third quarter of the 20th century. At the heart of this collection, are the collection of Roman epigraphs, the collection of Pre-Columbian ceramics and mummies, the Egyptian sarcophagus and mummy, the vast original collection from the excavation of Castro de Vila Nova de S. Pedro (Chalcolithic about 3000 b.c), in Azambuja, and also various contemporary art pieces which were created for the Museu Arqueológico do Carmo during the renovation of the museum space.