What to see / do
Fundição Tomarense - Núcleo Museológico
Tomar - Portugal
Museum of Matches
In Tomar, there is a unique museum of its kind in Portugal and one of the most original in Europe and in the world: the Museum of Matches. It houses a collection of more than 60 000 match boxes, match labels and matchbooks. The collection was donated in 1980 to the Municipality by the Tomar-born Aquiles da Mota Lima. The Saint Francis Convent has two cloisters; since 1989 one of them hosts the Museum's collection. It all started in 1953, on board a vessel, in which Aquiles da Mota Lima was travelling to London to attend the coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II. On the trip, he met an American woman who collected matchboxes and he promised to send her the most special boxes he would find during his travels. The first two matchboxes in the collection are precisely allusive to the ceremony he was going to, one with the portrait of Queen Isabel II and the other with a crown and the year of the event, 1953. It turns out that Mota da Lima ended up not buying only one sample, but two, thus starting his own collection. And from there, he never stopped. With the contributions and efforts of family and friends, as well as exchanges with other collectors, the collection has reached an impressive dimension. Atualmente, o acervo representa cerca de 127 países do mundo e está distribuído por 7 salas recheadas de surpresas e curiosidades que nos levam numa viagem extraordinária à volta do mundo. Currently, the collection represents about 127 countries in the world and is distributed in 7 rooms filled with surprises and curiosities that take us on an extraordinary journey around the world. At present, the Museum continues to expand the collection through the purchase of boxes and donations.
Tomar - Portugal
House of Cubes | Tomar Center for Studies in Photography
The renovation of the House of Cubes is part of a project to reconvert an inactive infrastructure which is especially interesting in social and economic terms in the urban fabric of Tomar. Located in the historic city center, by the Nabão riverside, the building has been subject to successive changes and use over time. Originally conceived as a storage and counting house for agricultural products used as rent payments to religious orders, the House of Cubes got its name from the old capacity measurement units, the bushel and the almude, at the time commonly known as “cubes”. Later on, it became a military facility and afterwards it was adapted to an office building of the old Mendes Godinho factories. The truth is that the House of Cubes has survived the times, regaining a new role in the city within the Polis program as the Center for Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation. The rehabilitation of this space into a new cultural equipment of the city allowed it to host the Tomar Center for Studies in Photography, in 2018. This happened following a partnership between the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar and the Municipality of Tomar, with a view to the development of teaching, research and training activities as well as other related undertakings, in the scientific, technical and artistic areas of photography. Casa dos Cubos has an exhibition space and a cafeteria with a terrace overlooking the Nabão River.
Tomar - Portugal
Eletric Central of Tomar - Museological Nucleus
Tomar | PORTUGAL
Tomar Templar Interpretive Center
Tomar - Portugal
Lopes-Graça Memory House;
Fernando Lopes-Graça was a famous Portuguese composer, conductor and musicologist, a prominent personality that profoundly marked the Portuguese culture of the 20th century. He was born in Tomar on the 17th of December of 1906, at Dr. Joaquim Jacinto Street 25. In honor of this son of the city, the Lopes-Graça Memory House was inaugurated in 2008, in the place where the composer was born. The Memory House works as a documentary and artistic center where we can get to know the life and work of this extraordinary Portuguese composer and intellectual. At the House, several personal objects of Lopes-Graça are exhibited, including his birth certificate, scores and musical pieces, testimonies of his vast musical artistic work. Here, visitors can read books, consult documentation and listen to music. In addition to having developed a solid musical career, Lopes-Graça has always been an intellectual opponent of the fascist and authoritarian regime in force in Portugal until 1974. He was therefore the target of repression by the regime, having even been arrested by the political police and forced to go into exile in France. Fernando Lopes-Graça is the author of a rich literary work with important reflections on Portuguese music, but he is also the author of a musical work of unparalleled quality. The house where Fernando Lopes-Graça was born was donated to the Municipality of Tomar by its last owner, Rui Manuel Dias Costa.
Tomar - Portugal
The Jewish Interpretative Center of Tomar
The Tomar Synagogue Interpretative Center opened to the public on October 15, 2019, after works to improve the Synagogue
Tomar - Portugal
Cine-Teatro Paraíso de Tomar
Renovated old theater, which was the first space dedicated to the show business in Tomar. The Cine-Teatro Paraíso reopened to the public in 2002 and is currently the main theater in the city, with capacity for 410 people.
Tomar - Portugal
Cultural Complex of Levada
The Tomar Flume Cultural Park (Complexo Cultural da Levada de Tomar) consists of a heritage requalification project of a set of buildings closely linked to the history of industrial production in Tomar. The Flume (Levada) is a channel through which, in the 12th century, the Templars diverted part of the Nabão River to lead the waters to the Friars Dam. This heritage ensemble, composed essentially by the Mills, Power Plants and Grinding Factories along the Nabão River and in the historic city center, has its origin in the medieval period, crosses the modern age and reaches the contemporary era. Noteworthy are the old mill buildings (which were fed by the potential water energy, through vertical hydraulic wheels or horizontal wheels), the two old grinding factories (using both hydraulic and electrical energy) and a power plant. In 2011, when the architectural rehabilitation and requalification works of the Tomar Flume began - in view of its safeguarding, musealization and cultural fruition -, archaeological structures documenting the production of olive oil approximately between the 16th and 19th centuries were found. Located in the Flume Cultural Park, the Power Plant of Tomar – Museum Center is a living portrait of the 19th century, when the city was one of the first in the country to have electric public lighting. In this museum, it is recalled that the Power Plant, inaugurated on July 1, 1901, was built with the purpose of supplying electricity to the 100 lamps of 16 candles that existed in the city, and that Tomar was one of the first cities in the country, after Elvas and Vila Real, to have electric public lighting.
Tomar - Portugal
Center for Contemporary Art - Municipal Museum
The Center for Contemporary Art - Municipal Museum was created in 2004, when Professor José-Augusto França donated a relevant part of his personal art collection - the result of several decades of work as an art critic and historian - to the Municipality of Tomar. The set of more than two hundred works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs, covers a period in time that goes from 1932 to the present day. Jorge Mascarenhas is the architect responsible for the adaptation project of the building where the Center is installed. It has an exhibition area of about 500m2. Outside, two large-scale works welcome visitors: the sculpture “Blue Tree” by José de Guimarães and the tile panel “Luminous Modulation X” by Eduardo Nery, both specifically designed for the Museum and offered by the artists. The collection includes works from different periods of the 20th century. The Center for Contemporary Art plays an important role in the dissemination of Portuguese art of the 20th century, functioning as a kind of compendium of what was done in Portugal in the last century, as it integrates many of the works currently studied in art schools, for this period.
Tomar - Portugal