Museum of Communication

The Communications Museum is located between Santos and Cais do Sodré in Lisbon. It’s a space that reveals how the Portuguese have communicated for over five centuries.

Take a trip back in time at the "Overcoming Distance - Five Centuries of Telecommunications in Portugal” exhibition, where you can see the evolution and improvement of the techniques that have enabled Humanity to communicate more rapidly and efficiently.

To understand how the internet became global, you can visit the "Submarine Cables" exhibition. It showcases a timeline of 150 years of history marked by moments that have critically influenced and are essential to our daily lives. These include the development of fibre optic cables that support almost all global multimedia communication and are responsible for bringing individuals, societies and nations closer together. The exhibition also highlights the decisive role that Portugal played in these developments.

Finally, don't miss the mala-posta (postal service) exhibition centre. It recreates the moulting station where the mail carriages would stop for change-overs and rest. With life-size figures, this exhibition centre showcases situations and episodes associated with the transportation of mail and people in the 18th century. In the exhibition, employees and passengers seem to have been immobilised in a moment where time has stopped, seeming like they will return to their everyday lives in the next instant.

A visit to the Communications Museum is interesting for families with children because it possesses a vital educational component. Together, they’ll be able to visualise and get an accurate perception of a different time in history, one when it was impossible to communicate with a simple click.