National Sports Museum

The National Sports Museum (in portuguese Museu Nacional do Desporto) is housed in the Palácio Foz¹, building from the 18^th century. Managed by the Instituto Português do Desporto e Juventude², it was inaugurated on the July 12^th of 2012. In that year, Portugal celebrated the centenary of its first participation in the Olympics.

The mission to divulge the history of sports in Portugal took numerous athletes to donate their personal items to the museum's collection, highlighting, the Golden Booth - 1965 won by Eusébio and the equipment parts used by Rosa Mota when was crowned Olympic champion (year 1988) in Seoul.

It was also gathered some equipment utilized the greatest alpine climber of the Portuguese history. João Garcia climbed the 14 tallest mountains in the world, the only ones with more than 8.000 meters of altitude. He was the tenth man of all times to conquered the Crown of the Himalayas without resorting to supplemental oxygen.

In this museum space there is the Biblioteca Nacional do Desporto³, whose collection possesses more than 60.000 units and includes books, periodicals, video tapes and videos. The main attraction of the library is the first book of sports to be edited in the whole world that dates from 1577: De Arte Gymnastica⁴, whose author was Hieronymus Mercurialis.

Translation references

1. Foz Palace
2. Portuguese Institute of Sport and Youth
3. National Sports Library
4. Of Gymnastics Art