Museu de Portimão

Portimão’s history is deeply intertwined with the natural resources of the Mediterranean pattern of its territory and with the strong fluvial and maritime influence.

In this context, the processes of transformation and conservation by the salt of the fish in its waters have emerged since antiquity. Later, in the 20th century, an important fishing and canning industry occupied the banks of the Arade river.

In 1996, the need to preserve all this historical heritage motivated the acquisition, by the Municipality of Portimão, of the old fish canning factory “São Francisco”, located on the city’s waterfront.
It is from this renovated factory building, dated to the end of the century XIX, which emerges, on the 17th of May 2008, the Portimão Museum, a center for cultural dissemination and a space for discovering the origins and evolution of the community, its territory and the most striking aspects of its industrial and maritime history.

Its reference exhibition “Portimão, Território e Identidade”, represents a historical synthesis of the socioeconomic and cultural trajectory of the people who lived here and marked the uniqueness of their identity and territory.