A place you should visit: Museu do Douro

The Douro Museum, as a museum of territory, is the place par excellence for welcoming and representing the memory, culture and identity of the wine region - Douro Heritage of Humanity.

If you are thinking of a good place where you can get to know the region in detail, the Douro museum is a place you cannot miss.

Mission and objectives

Nowadays, The Douro Museum, was conceived as a territory museum, multipurpose and polynuclear, aimed at gathering, conserving, identifying and disseminating the vast museological and documentary heritage scattered throughout the region, and should constitute an instrument at the service of the socio-cultural development of the Douro Demarcated Region. From a "community museology" perspective, the Douro Museum is a process whose development should involve active collaboration with local, regional and international institutions.

The management of the Douro Museum is the responsibility of the Museu do Douro Foundation, created by Dec. Law 70/2006, instituting it as a legal person of private law and public utility. The Museu do Douro Foundation aims to install, maintain and manage the Douro Museum. In fulfilling its mission, the Douro Museum preserves, studies, exhibits and interprets material and immaterial objects representative of the identity, culture, history and development of the Douro, regardless of the historical period, of various types and manufactures, with special focus on elements associated with viticulture, a central activity in the Douro.

The Douro Museum assumes its role in the formation of cultural values, in active articulation with the other agents and institutions, promoting not only an educational function of disseminating and contextualizing the culture and history of the region, but, above all, providing experiences capable of motivate community participation and active involvement. The headquarters building of the Douro Museum is located in the city of Peso da Régua, the result of the rehabilitation work of the emblematic building of the former “Companhia Geral da Agricultura das Vinhas do Alto Douro”, opened on 20 December 2008.

The building

Casa da Companhia, which today hosts the Douro Museum, is one of the most emblematic buildings in the history of the region. Its construction is directly related to the foundation of the General Company of Agriculture of the Vineyards of Alto Douro that in 1756 created the first regulated wine zone in the world.

The building was designed to bring together several functions: 

• It accommodated administrative services that met the Company's regulatory and commercial guidelines; 
• A court to deal with legal proceedings within its legal sphere; 
• Winemaking and wine storage areas;
• Temporary accommodation for employees and winemakers from all over the Douro, who were heading to Régua to negotiate wines at the annual fair. 

The building's multidisciplinary vocation gave it particular architectural characteristics that combine elements of Douro farmhouses and Pombaline architecture.

Some of the visit's highlights

• Visit to the Douro Museum with lunch at the restaurant "A Companhia", a welcoming, inspiring and captivating space;
•  Visit to the permanent exhibition «Douro: Matéria e Espírito»;
•  Offer of a glass of Port, accompanied by dried fruits;
  

The visit lasts, on average, two hours, where it is possible to visit the various corners of the farm shown by a specialized guide and is given in 4 languages: Portuguese, Spanish, English and French.

Know more about this place at: https://www.museudodouro.pt/