Portugal Museums & Monuments Visitor Statistics: INE Counts 18.0M, the State Network 4.84M and Jerónimos Is Not First

Four counters, four definitions

Portugal has four kinds of visitor count, and they do not add up. The first is INE’s museum survey, which covered 479 museums in 2025 and recorded 17,992,819 visits, of which 8,317,035 (46.2%) were by foreigners. The second is MMP, the public company that has run the state’s museums, monuments and palaces since 1 January 2024 under Decree-Law 79/2023. Its 37 or 38 venues (sources differ) recorded 4,843,299 entries in 2025. The third is Parques de Sintra, which reports ticket entries across its parks and palaces, about 3.1 million in 2025. The fourth is everyone else: Lisbon’s municipal company EGEAC, foundations such as Serralves and Gulbenkian, and private venues, each with its own definition.

All four count entries. MMP’s release does not define a visitor, and the total includes paid and free entries: 2,978,173 paid (61%) and 1,865,126 free, according to Lusa’s reading of the release. A person who visits Jerónimos and the Belém Tower on one day counts twice. INE’s documentation, as far as we could read it, does not say whether a visit is a ticket or a door count, or whether free entry is included. Only the Acesso 52 free-entry scheme can identify individuals, by tax number, and it covers residents only.

The INE series is not a clean time series either. The number of museums meeting INE’s statistical criteria rose from 426 in 2023 to 475 in 2024, with most of the increase in specialised, ethnography and art museums, and the publication we read does not explain it. INE reports 19.4 million visits for 2024, up 7.6%, and part of that rise is a coverage effect. The INE database also shows 17,992,819 visits and 479 museums for 2025, but we found no release that states it, so the table marks 2025 as database-only.

On INE’s numbers, museum visits in 2024 were 1.7% below 2019 and in 2025 they were 9.0% below. The foreign share was 52.3% in 2019 and 46.2% in 2025. Pordata’s per-resident series, which uses INE’s revised population, shows 1,721.5 visits per 1,000 inhabitants in 2024 and 1,577.5 in 2025, a fall of 8.4% (derived). The state network moves differently. Its 2025 total is 3.4% above its 2019 total, but the 2019 figure covered about 25 sites and the 2025 figure covers 37 or 38, so the comparison is not like for like.

INE’s 2024 edition adds a breakdown by type that no other source offers. History museums drew 5,092,765 visits, art museums 4,832,248, territory museums 1,922,597, mixed museums 1,867,084, specialised museums 1,789,462, archaeology museums 1,291,090 and science and technology museums 1,106,934. School groups made 1,507,160 visits (7.8%), 4.2% fewer than in 2023, and 55.0% of visitors also saw a temporary exhibition. The regional split exists in the same publication, but we could not read its table. The 2019 edition put 47.7% of visits in the Lisbon area and 30.4% in the North.

The state network: 4,843,299 entries and what the 4.4% fall hides

MMP counts 4,843,299 entries for 2025, down 4.38% or 221,929 from 5,065,228 in 2024. The network’s best recorded year is 2023 at 5,157,360, restated to 5,157,404 in April 2026. Earlier totals come from the DGPC, the directorate that ran the same monuments until 2023, and cover fewer sites: 4,055,968 in 2015, 5,060,780 in 2017 (restated by MMP to 5,072,266), 4,677,407 in 2018 and 4,685,371 in 2019 as first published. The 2019 total was later given as 4,817,927 for 25 sites. In 2020 the network fell to 1,295,528. Each total has a different perimeter, so the series should not be chained into a trend.

MMP and Lusa give one reason for the 2025 fall: full or partial closures for works financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR). MMP’s note names seven closures in 2025, among them the Museu do Abade de Baçal in Bragança (February to November), the Belém Tower (April or May, sources conflict), the Museu de Lamego (May), the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga and the Picadeiro Real (October), and the Museu Nacional do Azulejo and the Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança (November). Lusa added older closures, among them the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia since April 2022 and the Museu Nacional da Música since October 2023. By the end of 2025 Lusa counted 17 venues closed or restricted, and the figure given on 1 August 2026 was 18 of 37.

One closure explains more than the whole fall. The Belém Tower recorded 127,791 entries in 2025 against 387,379 in 2024, a loss of 259,588 that equals 117% of the network’s drop (derived). Without the Tower, the rest of the network recorded 4,715,508 entries against 4,677,849, a gain of 0.8% (derived). No source we found separates the effect of the other closures from gains elsewhere, so the 0.8% describes the arithmetic and does not estimate underlying demand.

Jerónimos went the other way. Its 1,040,203 entries are 10.0% above 2024 and 5.1% below its 2019 level of 1,096,283, and it is the only site in the network above one million. It got there after a price rise: the adult ticket went from €12 to €18 on 1 January 2025 under Despacho 13793/2024, the only price above €15 in the network. No source we found links the 2025 gain to the closure of the Tower next door, and none links it to the price. Both are plausible and neither is measured. The Tower’s history shows how much a single count can move: 607,836 in 2015, 685,694 in 2016, 450,546 in 2018 after the DGPC introduced entry controls and suspended combined tickets, and 427,235 in 2019.

The Tower’s return is the one 2026 data point the network has. It reopened on 27 May 2026 after works that cost about €1.05 million (Observador, from Lusa, April 2025) or €1,134,981 on the PRR list (Lusa, November 2025). MMP reported about 5,300 visitors in the first week and more than 15,000 in the first three weeks. Entry is limited to 900 a day in 30-minute slots with 60 people inside at once; the regulation allows 960. The Tower is closed on Mondays, so the cap bounds the annual total, a point the business section returns to.

The ranking also shows how much of the network sits in one city. The six Lisbon venues in the top 14 (Jerónimos, the Azulejo museum, the Coaches Museum, the Panteão, Ajuda and the Tower) recorded 2,012,714 entries, 41.6% of the network total (derived). Other Lisbon venues in the network are not in the public list, so the true share is higher. The Palácio Nacional de Mafra recorded 151,069 entries against 360,845 in 2019, a fall of 58% that no source we found explains.

Elsewhere the movements are large and unexplained. The Fortaleza de Sagres fell 26.8%, from 443,691 to 324,926, and we found no source that gives a reason. The Museu Nacional do Azulejo rose 12.8% to 335,255 although it closed in November, and now ranks fifth, ahead of Alcobaça and the Coaches Museum. The Paço dos Duques in Guimarães fell 2.3% to 367,537 and is second in the 2025 list. That second place holds only inside this network: in 2024 it was fourth among the sites with published figures, behind Jerónimos, Sagres and the Belém Tower.

Who comes: paid, free and foreign

Before 1 August 2024 entry to state monuments was free on Sundays and public holidays. The government then introduced Acesso 52, which gives Portuguese citizens and residents 52 free days a year on any weekday at 37 mainland venues, registered by citizen card and tax number. Using several venues on one day costs one day. The paid share of MMP entries fell from 76% in 2023 to 66% in 2024 and 61% in 2025, and the foreign share held between 55% and 57.6%. Acesso 52 accounted for 450,275 entries from August to December 2024 and 892,637 in 2025, which is 18.4% of the year’s entries (derived; MMP says 18% of tickets).

Lusa reported on 1 August 2026 that in the twelve months to 31 May 2026 there were 1,697,223 free entries out of 3,951,639, and that residents took 81.9% of them and foreigners 18.1%. That window is not a calendar year and cannot be compared with 4,843,299. The minister put the revenue loss at about €10 million, said 4% of the population had used the scheme and said that over 60% of users came once (21 July). On 8 October she said 71% did not return. The two statements differ, neither gives a base, and both are unaudited.

The European Commission opened an infringement procedure in December 2024 because the scheme excludes residents of other EU states. On 8 October 2026 the government committed to revise it by the end of June 2027, with the terms undecided. We found no Portuguese proposal to charge non-residents more. The stated direction is equal treatment of EU residents, which differs from the Louvre, where non-EU adults have paid €32, €10 more, since 14 January 2026.

The 2025 price table in Despacho 13793/2024 (Diário da República, 21 November 2024) set three tiers. UNESCO and high-pressure sites pay €15, mid-range sites €10 and the smallest €5, with Jerónimos at €18 as the exception. The Belém Tower, Mafra, Ajuda and the Coaches Museum went from €8 to €15, Convento de Cristo, Alcobaça and the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga from €10 to €15, and the Paço dos Duques from €5 to €10. Ages 13 to 24 and over 65 pay half. We found no 2026 price change. MMP’s own-revenue target was €18 million for 2025 and is €24 million for 2026; those are targets, and no outturn has been published.

Outside the network: Pena, the castle and the private venues

Parques de Sintra sold about 3.1 million entries in 2025 across all its sites, and Lusa put Pena Palace and park at about 1.9 million (2.1 million in 2024), rounded to the nearest hundred thousand. That is 1.8 times the Jerónimos total. The count is of entries to the combined park and palace, and the park alone is a cheaper ticket (€12, against €20 for the essential visit and €45 for the complete visit). Pena admits at most 5,100 people a day in 17 slots, a figure from company sources, and still outdraws every MMP monument.

The Castelo de São Jorge, run by Lisbon’s EGEAC, recorded 2,021,242 entries in 2018, ahead of Pena’s 1,976,367 that year. EGEAC reported 1,633,518 “público presencial” in 2023, and the press cited about 1.7 million for 2024. We found no 2025 figure, and EGEAC’s 2025 target was 1,758,813. INE’s ranking for 2019 named Pena first, then Serralves, the Berardo Collection, the treasury museum of Porto Cathedral and the National Palace of Sintra, with no castle and no per-site counts. The five together drew 5.3 million visits, 71.5% by foreigners. INE counts museums, palaces and monuments that meet its criteria, which may explain the castle’s absence, though we found no INE statement saying so.

The Quinta da Regaleira has the most surprising series. Its operator, Fundação Cultursintra, reported that 2019 “exceeded the target of 1,000,000”, then 298,525 in 2020, 389,791 in 2021 (387,679 in the 2021 accounts), 965,702 in 2022 and 1,382,800 in 2023. January to September 2024 brought 1,113,340. The 2025 report gives no count and says only that visitors fell. Ticket revenue rose from €8.29 million in 2019 to €15.70 million in 2025, and revenue per visitor rose from €8.69 in 2022 to €9.67 in 2023 and €10.55 in the first nine months of 2024 (derived). Our earlier Sintra and Cascais article said no Regaleira counts existed after 2021. That was wrong, and the claims panel below corrects it.

In Lisbon the Oceanário counted 1,383,747 visitors in 2023, 1.7% below its 1,407,183 of 2019, and we found no 2024 or 2025 figure. The Gulbenkian reported “more than 670,000” visits to its museum, Modern Art Centre and temporary exhibitions in 2025 and “more than 900,000” to the garden, with the museum closed for renovation for part of the year. The MAC/CCB recorded 687,762 in 2025 and the MAAT about 380,000 in 2024. In Porto, Serralves counted 902,024 for the museum in 2025, which placed it 84th in The Art Newspaper’s world top 100 and made it the only Portuguese museum on that list. The University of Coimbra recorded 379,578 on its tourist circuit and the Côa Museum a record 44,824 in 2024.

Three large numbers need caution. Bom Jesus do Monte in Braga announced more than two million visitors in 2023, but entry is free and no method is stated. The Livraria Lello is credited with 1.2 million a year in a magazine narration with no named source. The Torre dos Clérigos reported about 1.2 million in 2022, a figure that combines the church, the museum and the tower. None enters the ranking as an equal. The 6,478,323 pilgrims counted at Fátima are in the same position, because they are attendances at celebrations, as our Fátima article explains.

Against the Acropolis, the Alhambra and Pompeii

The Acropolis recorded 4,609,113 visitors in 2025 according to ELSTAT figures reproduced by the Greek press, with entry capped at 20,000 a day. That is 4.4 times the Jerónimos total and close to the whole MMP network. Sagrada Família reported 4,877,567, Pompeii 4,000,090 at the excavation site alone (4,118,926 across the park), the Prado 3,513,402 and the Alhambra 2,726,871 against an annual limit of 2,765,500. The Louvre reported 8.7 million in 2024 and about 9 million in 2025, a rounded figure. Greece’s state archaeological sites and museums together recorded 20,005,888 entries in 2025, a figure we hold only through our sister Greek site and press reports, and Italy’s state museums recorded 60.85 million in 2024.

Set against national nights, the Portuguese sites look modest. Jerónimos equals 1.16 entries per 100 nights recorded in tourist accommodation (89,427,522 on Eurostat’s count including campsites, against 89.7 million on INE’s all-types series), and the whole MMP network 5.4. Pena is about 2.1. The ratio is crude, because 53.8% of museum visits in INE’s survey are by Portuguese residents (derived) and day trippers generate no nights. Our 2025 annual report sets out the two night series.

Ten claims tested

The panel below tests ten claims about who is most visited, whether 2025 was a record and what the counts mean. Three come from our own files: a source named in our plan, a Regaleira statement in an earlier article and a percentage in our working notes attached to the wrong year. Each is corrected where it appears.

What nobody publishes

No source gives unique visitors, the tourist share of any site, MMP’s table for all 37 venues (14 are public), a 2026 year-to-date figure for the network or for Jerónimos, Pena’s audited 2025 count, the Castelo de São Jorge’s 2025 count or an INE site ranking after 2019. MMP’s 2025 release took four months, so 2026 data are unlikely before spring 2027. INE’s 2019 split put 47.7% of visits in the Lisbon area and 30.4% in the North, and we could not read the regional table for later years. Madeira’s statistics office counted 23 museums and about 447,100 visitors in 2024, 66.7% of them foreign.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Book timed tickets for the places with caps. The Belém Tower reopened on 27 May 2026 with a limit of 900 visitors a day in 30-minute slots and 60 people inside at once, and the first week brought about 5,300 visitors (MMP via Lusa); our Belém Tower guide explains whether to go in. Pena admits 5,100 a day in 17 slots and the Regaleira 250 per half hour in 2026, and our Pena Palace guide covers the ticket options. Jerónimos costs €18 for adults and has no published daily cap or timed entry that we could verify; a report of a 3,000-a-day limit rests on one article. The Acesso 52 free days are for Portuguese citizens and residents, so budget for tickets. The quieter end of the ranking, such as Alcobaça (195,611) and the Convento de Cristo in Tomar (350,813), draws a third or less of Jerónimos.

Tourism businesses and investors. The network’s 2025 total was depressed by one monument, and 2026 will not show a clean recovery. The minister counted 18 of 37 venues closed or restricted in August, and the Tower’s 900 a day over roughly 310 open days is about 280,000 entries a year (derived; the Tower is closed on Mondays), below the 387,379 of 2024 unless the cap rises. Jerónimos passing 1,096,283 would put it above 2019. The policy risk is the free-entry scheme: the government has committed to change it by the end of June 2027, and each option, from opening it to EU residents to restricting it, would move the 38.5% free share and the €24 million own-revenue target differently. Operators selling timed tickets should watch the Pena cap and the Regaleira slots, because those venues move more entries than any MMP monument.

Journalists and analysts. Safe to cite: MMP’s 4,843,299 entries in 2025 (down 4.38%, 61% paid, 56% foreign), Jerónimos at 1,040,203, the Tower at 127,791, INE’s 17,992,819 museum visits for 2025 as a database figure, and 892,637 Acesso 52 entries. Do not repeat that Jerónimos is Portugal’s most visited monument without naming MMP, that 2025 was a record, that 4.8 million people visited, or that Jerónimos is capped at 3,000 a day. Three of the corrections above are ours. The series finding is that Portugal’s heritage counts are fragmented by owner, so every ranking is a ranking of one network. The attendance counts at Fátima show the same problem from the religious side.