Lisbon Travel Guide

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

Gulbenkian was an Armenian oil magnate who died in 1955 having put together one of the world's finest private art collections. The collection is now housed in a modern centre where the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation sponsors a host of cultural and performing arts projects, and has a rotating exhibition of works by Portuguese and foreign artists. The Gulbenkian collection itself covers Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, Islamic ceramics and textiles, Syrian treasures, Chinese ceramics, Japanese prints and lacquerware and European medieval illuminated manuscripts. The collection is so vast and varied as to be breathtaking. Among the paintings are two Rembrandts, a Rubens and a Renoir.