National Museum of Resistance and Freedom opens today in Fortaleza de Peniche

per Lusa, April 27, 2024

The National Museum of Resistance and Freedom (MNRL), in the Peniche Fortress, is inaugurated today, on the day that 50 years pass since the release of political prisoners, in the presence of the President of the Republic and the Minister of Culture.

Created in 2017, in one of the high-security prisons of the Estado Novo dictatorship reserved for opponents, it opened its doors two years later, on April 25, 2019, with a memorial and the exhibition “Por Teu Livre Pensamento”, which anticipated the contents of the future museum.

Closed in 2022, the MNRL underwent works aimed at its definitive installation, in a contract estimated at three million euros, shared with community funds, for a total assembly cost of around 4.3 million euros.

Directed by museologist and historian Aida Rechena, the museum opens with the memorial dedicated to the almost 2,700 political prisoners that the fortress detained between 1934 and 1974, and with an exhibition route that passes through the high security cells, the individual cells, the Freedom Gallery and the exhibition “Resistance and Freedom”. The visit also involves the Chapel of Santa Bárbara, which tells the story of the fortress and the prison, the Fortim Redondo, a place of isolation and punishment, the parlor, the cistern courtyard and the specialized bookstore.

In 2016, the Peniche Fortress, in the district of Leiria, classified as a National Monument since 1938, had been included in the list of historical monuments in the Revive program to be granted to private parties, but after two months the controversy led the Assembly of the Republic to defend the its requalification. It was then decided to create a museum dedicated to the memory of the fight against the dictatorship, the fight for freedom and those who dared to resist.

The history of Peniche prison includes, among others, the escapes of communist leader António Dias Lourenço, on December 17, 1957, and of PCP general secretary Álvaro Cunhal, on January 3, 1960.