Museu da Marioneta, Puppet museum in Estrela, Portugal
Museu da Marioneta is a puppet theater museum in Lisbon, housed in a historic building in the Estrela neighborhood with a collection of marionettes and theatrical objects. The rooms display traditional hand puppets, mechanical figures, and other stage instruments from different periods.
The collection was founded in 1987 by the São Lourenço puppet theater company and later moved to the historic Convent of Bernardas in this neighborhood. The move to the current location took place in 2001.
The museum displays Portuguese puppetry traditions alongside works from Southeast Asia and Africa, showing how this art form is practiced differently across the world. Visitors can observe how various cultures developed their own techniques and styles.
The museum offers guided tours and workshops where visitors can learn more about the craft techniques. There are also separate areas with regularly changing exhibitions and occasional demonstrations.
The museum preserves hand puppets and intricate mechanical devices that show how manipulation techniques developed over decades. You can see how simple figures were controlled with strings and how more flexible systems later emerged.
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