National Coach Museum

The National Coach Museum holds one of the largest collections of historic carriages anywhere. It was founded on 23 May 1905 as the Royal Coach Museum, at the initiative of Queen Amélie of Orléans and Braganza, who wanted to preserve the royal household's vehicles. For more than a century it was shown in the Royal Riding Hall of the Belém Palace, and in 2015 most of the collection moved to a new building across the road.

The new museum, designed by the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha with the Ricardo Bak Gordon studio, is a large raised block with a vast, open exhibition hall. The carriages are lined up as if in a procession, which makes it easy to compare them and to see how styles changed over three centuries. The collection numbers about 9,000 objects in total, including saddlery, liveries, trumpets and portraits as well as the vehicles themselves.

The oldest carriage on display is the travelling coach of Philip II of Portugal, used during a royal visit in 1619, relatively plain and built for long journeys. From there the vehicles become steadily more elaborate. The centrepiece is the group of three triumphal coaches made in Rome for the Portuguese embassy to Pope Clement XI in 1716, covered in gilded carving and allegorical sculpture celebrating Portugal's overseas expansion. There are also sedan chairs, children's carriages, hunting vehicles and nineteenth-century berlins, as well as the landau in which King Carlos I and his heir were travelling when they were assassinated in 1908.

The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00 and is closed on Mondays and a few public holidays. The building is step-free, with lifts between levels, which makes it one of the easier museums in Belém for wheelchair users and families with pushchairs. Allow about an hour. The older Royal Riding Hall, the Picadeiro Real, is currently closed for renovation, so check before you go if you hope to see it.

The museum is on Avenida da Índia, close to the Belém train station on the Cascais line, and tram 15E stops nearby. The Belém Palace, the official residence of the President of the Republic, is next to the old riding hall. The Pastéis de Belém bakery and the Jerónimos Monastery are a few minutes' walk to the west.