The Museu da Marioneta is located in Madragoa, one of the areas of the city you must visit while staying in Lisbon.

Housed in the convent of Bernardas, the museum provides the chance to visit a 17th-century building and the country’s largest collection of traditional Portuguese puppets.

The museum also has an amazing series of African and Asian puppets and masks from the Francisco Capelo collection.

The puppets and the various ways they are used are documented and explained here, from folk representations in fair scenarios to erudite contemporary theatre.

This very particular world is worth discovering, a place where the art of storytelling and acting, one of the first popular art forms, is told like a tale.