History
History
History of the National Sports Museum
The National Sports Museum is located in the Foz Palace, a historic building in a prime area of Lisbon. It exhibits testimonies of the history and culture of sport and its material and scientific development.
Cristiano Ronaldo's soccer shoes, Nelson Évora's sneakers or a Grand-Bi, the bicycle's predecessor, are some of the pieces in the National Sports Museum, which has almost 18 000 catalogued objects. Inaugurated on July 12, 2012, the year in which Portugal celebrated 100 years of participation in the Olympic Games, the space is the result of a public invitation addressed to sports federations to make known the heritage that athletes and the various sports have left behind. Since then, the Museum has held more than 40 exhibitions indoors and outdoors and has had almost 40,000 visitors.
The Museum also houses the National Library of Sport, which has a collection of around 60,000 registered items. Here, it is possible to find the most recent and important modern monographs on sport and some examples of historical relevance. For example, the book «De Arte Gymnastica», by Hieronymi Mercurialis, 1577 – considered the first sports book published in the world – or the «Arte da Caça da Altanaria», by D. Francisco de Mello, from 1616 – one of the first books on sport related to hunting –, the «Treatise on Physical Education of Children, for the Use of the Portuguese Nation», by Francisco de Manuel Franco, published by the Royal Academy of Sciences, in 1740, or «Ginnastica Femminil», by F. Valletti, edited by the Royal House of Milan, in 1892.
The Museum and the National Library of Sport make available to the national and international public a significant collection on the history of sport in Portugal. It offers a new space for temporary exhibitions related to this theme and an educational service with a transversal scope, and recently inaugurated the Jamor Interpretive Center, in the Swimming Pool Complex, which aims to show the evolution of the National Sports Center of Jamor (CDNJ), in the heritage, landscape, sports, recreational, cultural and environmental aspects.
Updated: 29/03/2023
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