Why is there a Museum of the Discoveries?

There are dates that invite us to visit museums. Others invite us to think about what they are, what they are for, and the place they occupy in the way a community recognises itself, questions itself and presents itself to the world. International Museum Day, marked on 18 May, is one of those occasions.

In 2026, the theme chosen by the International Council of Museums feels especially relevant: “Museums as bridges in a divided world”. In a context marked by social fragmentation, polarisation, and unequal access to knowledge and culture, museums now take on, more than ever, the role of bridges between cultures, generations, communities and countries.

In the case of a museum dedicated to the Portuguese Discoveries, the question becomes inevitable: why does it still make sense to tell this story? And why tell it from Porto?

What a museum does

The answer begins with the very nature of a museum. A museum does not exist only to preserve objects or transmit information. It exists to build bridges between times, places and people. To transform knowledge into experience. To make accessible a complex historical legacy shaped by courage, ingenuity, encounter, travel, science, trade, faith, conflict and transformation.

As trusted public spaces and places of learning, museums contribute to peaceful coexistence and mutual respect. They create environments where stories, objects and people meet, offering opportunities for reflection, exchange and shared understanding.

Why there is a Museum of the Discoveries

To speak of the Discoveries is to speak of a period that profoundly changed the relationship between continents, cultures and oceans. It is to speak of navigation, cartography, shipbuilding, maritime routes and contact between peoples. But it is also to recognise that this history must be presented with critical awareness, responsibility and a contemporary sense of perspective.

There is another dimension too, perhaps the most relevant in light of this year’s theme: the Discoveries were, above all, an encounter. An encounter between languages, religions, techniques, foods, ideas and peoples that until then had lived without knowing one another. From that encounter emerged the globalised world in which we live today, with all that is illuminating and all that is difficult about it.

It is at this crossroads that the mission of World of Discoveries takes shape: to present the Portuguese maritime epic through an immersive, educational and accessible experience, capable of engaging audiences of different ages, origins and levels of knowledge.

More than observing History from a distance, the visitor is invited to move through it – to step into its settings, understand its protagonists and recognise the global dimension of the voyages that departed from Portugal.

And why in Porto?

Because Porto is an essential part of this narrative.

The city has a deep connection to the river, the sea, trade and shipbuilding. Its identity was formed among riverbanks, quays, warehouses, vessels and routes. The proximity to the Douro and the Atlantic made Porto a place of departure, arrival and circulation of goods, ideas, techniques and people.

To establish a museum dedicated to the Discoveries here is not merely a geographical choice. It is a symbolic one.

It is no coincidence that we found our home in the former warehouses of Real Companhia Velha, founded in 1756 and the first great Portuguese company involved in overseas trade. The warehouses where we now welcome visitors stored, for more than two hundred years, the wine that travelled downriver to reach the world. It was only natural that, in such a place, a space dedicated precisely to the memory of those voyages should come into being.

World of Discoveries was therefore born in a place where maritime memory remains inscribed in the urban landscape and in the city’s relationship with water. In this context, the museum is not isolated from the city: it is in dialogue with it.

Bringing together what seems divided

The 2026 theme – “Museums as bridges in a divided world” – resonates directly with what we do every day.

The people who enter this house come from all over the world: Portuguese families, international tourists, school groups, emigrant communities returning home, and Portuguese speakers from Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique and Timor.

Here, everyone shares the same journey. And they leave with the sense that the history of this country – shaped by departures, encounters and returns – belongs, in large measure, to the world. In times of polarisation, a museum that tells a story of encounters is, in itself, a proposition.

A vision for the future

Our vision is to make this museum a reference space for interpreting Portuguese maritime expansion, fostering a living relationship between heritage, education, tourism and culture. A museum for families, schools, national visitors and international visitors. A place where learning happens through curiosity, emotion and experience.

Museums are not places of the past

No Dia Internacional dos Museus, importa lembrar que

On International Museum Day, it matters to remember that museums are not places of the past. They are places where the past is questioned from the perspective of the present. They are spaces where questions are built, perspectives are widened and History is recognised not as a closed narrative, but as a territory in constant re-reading.

That is why Museums of the Discoveries exist. To preserve memory, yes. But also to interpret it, contextualise it and share it – and, in an increasingly divided world, to build the bridges that make encounter possible.

And that is why this museum exists here: in Porto, a city of river and sea, of departures and encounters, where History continues to find new ways of being discovered.

Continue that discovery with us, on International Museum Day or on any other day of the year. Tickets are available at worldofdiscoveries.com or directly at the entrance. And to discover in detail what you will find on board, explore our Experience: Into the Unknown.