Melgaço Museum of Cinema

Melgaço has an improbable claim to fame in the film world: it was the birthplace of Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal's greatest filmmaker and one of the last surviving directors to have made silent films. The Museum of Cinema in the town centre collects equipment, posters, correspondence, and documentation spanning the full history of the medium, with particular focus on Oliveira's extraordinary career.

The museum is small but well-curated and utterly unexpected in a town this size. Oliveira's films — long, austere, literary — are not for everyone, but the museum makes their context accessible even to visitors unfamiliar with his work. It is the kind of institution that rewards curiosity: a world-class collection hidden in a corner of northern Portugal.

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A story
The museum's collection began with Melgaço-born filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira (1908–2015), who directed his first film in 1931 and his last in 2014 at the age of 105 — making him the world's oldest active filmmaker. His hometown honour him with a collection that spans a century of cinema.