Maritime Museum of Ílhavo

The Maritime Museum of Ílhavo was founded on the 8th August 1937. As a place of memories of the local people that created it, the museum started by assuming an ethnographic and regional vocation.

The museum was and still is a witness of the strong relation between the people of Ílhavo and the sea and the Aveiro lagoon. The “Faina Maior” – cod fishing with lines and hooks in single man dories in Newfoundland and Greenland – as well as the agro-maritime activities are the patrimonial references of the museum.

Each of the themes is present in a permanent exhibition offering the visitor the possibility to find traces of a recent past.

In the seas room, the third permanent exhibition of the museum, one can find a varied selection of boat models that express the diversity of the Portuguese maritime patrimony and the strong relation between the local people and the sea.

Besides the richness of its collections and exhibitions, the building where the museum is placed, opened on the 21st October 2001, is itself a public masterpiece. It is a beautiful example of modern architecture, distinguished by the critics. Visiting the maritime museum of Ílhavo is embarking on an adventure of the senses, knowledge and pleasure.