Things to Do in Lisbon: The Coach Museum

A museum of horse-drawn coaches sounds like the sort of thing you visit because it is raining. The Museu Nacional dos Coches is better than that: it holds the finest collection of royal carriages anywhere in the world, and several of them are so absurdly gilded that they stop being vehicles and become arguments about power.

It is Lisbon's most visited museum, and it is in Belém alongside the monastery and the tower, so you will be passing anyway.

There are two buildings, and this is the confusing part

If you read an older guide to this museum, it described a converted royal riding school. That is still there and it is no longer the main site.

The collection outgrew the riding school, and a new building opened in May 2015, designed by the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, who won the Pritzker Prize in 2006. It is a raised concrete box on pillars, deliberately plain, and it holds more than seventy coaches, carriages, chaises, berlins, litters and sedan chairs with room to walk around them.

The old building, the Picadeiro Real, the royal riding arena of the Belém Palace, remains open as part of the museum. It is a painted 18th century hall and is, frankly, the more beautiful room. Both sit on Praça Afonso de Albuquerque, a couple of minutes apart.

Go to both. The new building shows you the collection properly; the old one shows you the setting the collection was made for.

Tickets and hours

As of 2026, the new building is 6 euros, the Picadeiro Real is 4, and a combined ticket for both is 8. Under-12s go free.

Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00, last admission 17:30. Closed Mondays, and on 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May, and 24 and 25 December.

The Monday closure catches people out, because much of Belém is shut that day: plan the monastery, the tower and the coaches for the same non-Monday.

What to look for

The three Ambassadorial coaches built in Rome in 1716 for the Portuguese embassy to the Vatican are the reason this collection is famous. They are carved, gilded, covered in allegorical figures, and were designed to be seen once, by the Pope, in a procession intended to demonstrate that Portugal had money. They are ludicrous and they are magnificent.

Also worth finding: the coach in which King Carlos I and his son were assassinated in 1908 on the Terreiro do Paço, which has the bullet damage, and the small dark litters that were how people actually got about Lisbon's hills before anyone thought about wheels.

While you are in Belém

The Jerónimos Monastery and the Torre de Belém are both UNESCO sites and both a short walk away. Book the monastery ahead; the queue is the worst in Lisbon.

And the pastéis de nata at Pastéis de Belém, which have been made to the same monastery recipe since 1837 in a shop that seats several hundred people and still has a queue out of the door. Go inside and sit down rather than queueing at the takeaway window, which most tourists do not realise is an option.

Getting there

Tram 15 from Praça da Figueira or Cais do Sodré runs along the river to Belém and takes about twenty minutes. The train from Cais do Sodré towards Cascais stops at Belém and is faster.

Tram 15 is a modern articulated tram rather than the wooden Remodelado cars, so if you want the picturesque Lisbon tram experience, that is the 28 and it is a different trip.