The revenue achieved by Thursday in Mafra is nearly half of what was accumulated throughout 2022 at the Alto dos Moinhos metro station in Lisbon and about two-thirds of the total for the ten months of 2023 during which the museum was open.
During the COVID-19 pandemic years, 2020 and 2021, the museum welcomed 3,900 and 3,000 visitors, respectively, according to data from Museus e Monumentos de Portugal.
The National Music Museum celebrated the opening of its new premises in Mafra with a festive event last Saturday, more than two years after its closure in Lisbon. The move followed seven million euros spent in renovations, with free entry offered until Sunday.
Upon announcing the opening date in Mafra, the MMP indicated that the museum would feature a multimedia immersive hall. The inaugural programming would include the premiere of a piece commissioned from illustrator Bernardo Carvalho and musician Ricardo Jacinto, as well as ‘Harpa de ervas’, commissioned from composer Fátima Fonte and filmmaker Adriana Romero, developed from interviews with various personalities such as Ana Salazar, Afonso Reis Cabral, Álvaro Siza Vieira, Capicua, Herman José, Rui Paula, Simone de Oliveira, and Vasco Palmeirim.
According to the MMP, the new visitor circuit “includes multisensory, tactile, and olfactory experiences aimed at all audiences, who will also be able to play more than 20 different musical instruments and instrument models.”
Furthermore, new accessibility solutions are prepared: blind visitors will benefit from “tactile paving, braille, and audio description,” while deaf individuals will have video guides in Portuguese Sign Language. Visitors on the “autism spectrum or generally with some form of hypersensitivity” will have access to scheduled quiet visits and reduced visual stimuli.
Since 1994, the National Music Museum was located at the Alto dos Moinhos metro station in Lisbon. It has now permanently moved to the National Palace of Mafra following two years of renovations, which delayed the museum’s reopening by about a year and entailed an investment of nearly seven million euros through the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
“These new premises have enabled the rehabilitation of 8,000 square meters of the Royal Building of Mafra, including storage and common spaces like the ticket office, shop, and cafeteria, as well as doubling the number of specimens on display, now totaling 500 pieces within a 2,000 square meter visiting area,” the MMP stated.
