Lisbon Puppet Museum

A Saturday in Lisbon ... oh back to big city life... it was busy! And it wasn’t because of Carnival.

A lady told us today that Carnival really isn’t celebrated in Lisbon. It is a low key day that kids like to celebrate because they can get dressed up in costumes but only a few little towns in the interior go crazy with the parades and fun. That’s interesting.

We looked out the window and the sun was starting to come up so we ate a quick cereal breakfast and headed out. Our apartment is in an excellent location, right in the middle of everything, close Rossio metro station and to the Mundial Hotel. Restaurants and bakeries are all around us and so is the pedestrian street where there is a lot of action.

The plan was to walk the 2 1/2 km to Lisbon’s wonderful Puppet Museum housed in an old convent. The museum was founded in 1997 by a company that performed travelling shows both in Portugal and abroad.

The museum was far larger than we anticipated and had a huge variety of puppets from many different parts of the world - Turkey, Indonesia, Burma, China, New Zealand, Vietnam, Japan and Brazil, as well as European countries. The famous Bonecos de Santo Aleixo puppets of Portugal (late 1700’s) were there too. They are rod puppets made of wood and cork. And then there was a whole section of masks.

The puppets weren’t just rod puppets though. They were hand, string, water, shadow, and more. They were made of papier mache, clay, wood, paper, cloth, wool, foam and latex. What a great collection.

One section of the museum had puppets used for television and for film.

All in all, it was a wonderful place to spend a morning and talk to the managers of the museum.Read more