Museu RTP (radio and television)

RTP (Rádio e Televisão de Portugal) is Portugal’s public broadcaster, and it keeps a museum collection (the Coleção Visitável Museológica da RTP) at its headquarters in Lisbon. It is small, free and open on weekdays, so it suits home-educating families, groups, and anyone on holiday who has a spare hour and a child obsessed with cameras. Most of what the broadcaster has collected is also online, in the RTP virtual museum, which is worth exploring before or after a visit.

The collection covers both halves of RTP’s history. Portuguese public radio began with the Emissora Nacional, and RTP marked 90 years of public radio with an exhibition of 90 key pieces. Television came later: RTP’s first outside-broadcast van went live for the first time in February 1958.

The museum’s online walk-through of the gallery shows what is on display, and it is a long line of machines that recorded, sent or received sound and pictures. On the radio side there are phonographs and gramophones, a crystal set (an early radio that worked without batteries or mains power), a telegraph, rows of radio receivers from different decades, microphones, amplifiers, mixing desks and audio recorders. On the television side there are studio TV cameras, film cameras and the soundproof covers (“blimps”) used to stop a film camera’s whirring from being picked up, a video mixing desk, video recorders and old television sets, some combined with a radio.

For a child used to filming on a phone, the size of the old cameras is the talking point. Everything a phone does now once needed several people, a room of equipment and a van.

The star of RTP’s collection is its first outside-broadcast van, a Mercedes-Benz LP-312/36 built in Mannheim, Germany, in 1957 and fitted out as a mobile studio, the first vehicle of its kind in Portugal. On 9 February 1958 it made its first live broadcast from outside a studio: a football match between Sporting and an Austrian club at the Alvalade stadium. RTP and Mercedes-Benz Portugal restored it over more than a year, keeping most of the original television equipment, and RTP says it is now the only one of its kind in Europe.

The van belongs to RTP’s museum and documentation office, but the website does not say where it is kept. Ask when you book whether you can see it. If not, the virtual museum has a 360-degree tour of the inside, where children can find the camera control unit, the video and audio mixing desks, the record player and even the diesel tank, and a panel with the engine’s details (a six-cylinder, 110-horsepower diesel).

Children of about five to seven will enjoy the cameras and the odd-looking radios for a short visit. From eight upwards, the collection becomes a way into how sound and pictures travel: microphones turning voices into electrical signals, and transmitters and receivers at each end. Teenagers interested in media, film or engineering get the most out of it, especially paired with the online history timeline, which runs from Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism in 1819 and Morse’s telegraph to radio and television.

Visits are free on working days, Monday to Friday, from 10:00 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 17:00. Groups must book. The collection also opens on the first Saturday of each month (not holidays), but only for booked groups of at least 15 people, arranged at least a week in advance. That Saturday slot can work for a home-education co-op.

This is a working broadcaster’s headquarters, not a stand-alone museum. Email museu.virtual@rtp.pt or phone 217 947 923 or 217 947 961 before you go, even as a single family, to check it is open and whether you need to book a time. Do not expect a café, a shop or play areas: the website lists none.

The virtual museum (museu.rtp.pt) is in Portuguese and free, and it has more to do than the physical gallery:

• A virtual news studio where you record yourself reading the Telejornal (the main evening news) using a webcam and microphone, and watch other visitors’ attempts. It asks users to confirm they are over 13, so younger children should do it with a parent.
• Basic and advanced trivia games about Portuguese radio and TV.
• 360-degree and augmented-reality tours of the outside-broadcast van, and virtual versions of past exhibitions.
• A searchable collection of radio and TV objects, and a video library including a 1960s documentary visiting the Emissora Nacional.

For more on how messages and signals travel, the Museu das Comunicações near Cais do Sodré covers telegraphs, telephones and undersea cables, and is open on Saturday afternoons as well as weekdays. For a longer day in the east of the city, the Pavilhão do Conhecimento science centre and the Oceanário de Lisboa are both in Parque das Nações.

Is the RTP museum free?

Yes, visits are free. Groups must book.

Can you visit the RTP museum at the weekend?

Only on the first Saturday of the month, and only for booked groups of 15 or more. Families should plan a weekday visit.

Do you need to book?

Groups must book. Individuals and families should email or phone first, since the collection is inside RTP’s headquarters.

Is it good for young children?

It is a look-don’t-touch collection, so it suits children from about five for a short visit. Older children and teenagers who like filming or technology will get more from it.

Can you see the old outside-broadcast van?

It is part of RTP’s museum collection, but the website does not say whether it is on show at headquarters. Ask when you book, or explore it in the 360-degree online tour.