National Museum of Contemporary Art – Chiado Museum

The National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chiado Museum, was founded by a government decree on May 26th 1911.

Under the latter, the former National Museum of Fine Arts was split into the National Museum of Ancient Art, which inherited works dating from up to 1850 and remained at its location in the Palace of the Green Windows, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art comprising all works subsequent to that date, which was lodged in the Convento de S. Francisco, in a space next to the Academy of Fine Arts. 

Even on a provisional basis, the lodging of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in the Convento de S. Francisco was symbolic and opportunely placed in an area frequented by the artists of the generations represented in the museum. It occupied the old halls where exhibitions of romantic and realist art had taken place, in spaces adjoining the convent.