Alongside the rise in Portugal’s tourist figures last year, museum entrance numbers increased - by a laudable 8.1% - as tourists sought out monuments, palaces and museums cared for by the Directorate General of Cultural Heritage.
The overall headcount was 5,060,780 visitors to Portugal's monuments and museums last year with the most popular site being Lisbon’s Jerónimos Monastery which attracted over a million people, up 7.9% on the year before.
According to the Directorate, national monuments accounted for 2.9 million visitors last year, with a further 1.6 million visiting national museums.
The most popular museum was the National Coach Museum with 350,254 visits representing 22% of all visits to museums.
As for national monuments, the palaces of Mafra and Ajuda registered the greatest growth in visitor numbers with a total of 504,201 visitors, an increase of 26.9%.
The National Palace of Mafra attracted the highest number of visitors to national monuments, with a total of 377,961, accounting for 75% of visits but the highest growth rate was at the Ajuda National Palace where visitor numbers were up by over 80%.
