National Ethnology Museum

The National Ethnology Museum (in portuguese, Museu Nacional da Etnologia) was created in 1965 with the name Museu de Etnologia do Ultramar, having as its Director the Portuguese ethnologist António Jorge Frias.

It was this man who set the primary foundations for the constitution of a museum while leading and collecting a considerable amount of objects with ethnological value during the Study Missions of Ethnic Minorities of the Portuguese Overseas. In 1959, this collection of objects allowed to create an exhibition named Vida e Arte do Povo Maconde on which António Frias would publish a literary work of three volumes entitled Os Macondes de Moçambique.

The museum's collection includes around 40.000 pieces from all over the world, with higher incidence in Portugal and the former Portuguese colonies overseas.

Present in the permanent exhibition of the museum stands out the splint of Rio de Onor village, in the Bragança county. Erstwhile, it was made with razor nicks in a poplar stick and would serve as a topographic representation. The razor marks and the distance between them, were direct correspondences on houses in the village and the river that crosses it.

There are still in exhibition Portuguese popular musical instruments, masks and puppets from Mali, pot lids inscribed with proverbs of Cabinda, dolls from the southwest of Angola, the theater Wayang Kulit of Bali (theater of shadows) considered Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity since 2003 by the UNESCO, and more there is to enjoy in a space dedicated to telling the story and culture of Mankind.