Pharmacy Museum

Health and Pharmacy Museum – Lisbon

Near Calhariz, in the building of the Associação Nacional das Farmácias, the Pharmacy Museum opened in June 1996 and is the result of the wish of Portuguese pharmacies to preserve the history of their profession. The collection began to be assembled in 1981, when the association's board asked every pharmacy in the country to donate pieces for the future museum; the response exceeded all expectations and saved a heritage that was at risk of disappearing. Between 1997 and 2010, national and international auctions and purchases from private collectors broadened the holdings to the history of pharmacy worldwide. The route crosses civilisations as distant as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Incas and the Aztecs, Islam, Tibet, China and Japan, and follows European pharmacy from the Middle Ages to Fleming's isolation of penicillin in 1929. In the section devoted to Portuguese pharmacy, authentic apothecaries and pharmacies have been reconstructed, from the old eighteenth-century apothecary to the Farmácia Liberal of the early twentieth century, alongside a traditional Chinese pharmacy from Macau dating from the late nineteenth century and an area on military pharmacy. The exhibition ends with the portable pharmacies of the space shuttle Endeavour, from December 2000, medicines from the Mir orbital station and food eaten by Russian astronauts. Since 2010 there has also been a branch in Porto.

Located at: Museu da Farmácia
Address: Rua Marechal Saldanha, 1, 1249-069 Lisboa
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 10:00-13:00 and 14:00-18:00 (last admissions 12:30 and 17:30; closed on Sundays, 1 January, 24, 25 and 31 December)
Phone: +351 213 400 688
Coordinates: 38.7100683, -9.1472474
Buses: 774, 22B, 758
Tram: 28E, 25E, 12E, 24E
Metro: Cais do Sodré (Green), Baixa-Chiado (Blue, Green)
Train: Cascais Line, Cais do Sodré Station, Sintra Line, Rossio Station
Boat: Cais do Sodré River Station
Opened: 1996 (30 years)