The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA) is a cultural service under the responsibility of the Direção-Geral do Património Cultural (Directorate General for Cultural Heritage).
Founded in 1884, it is the leading public museum in Portugal. It holds the most important Portuguese public collection of art, ranging from paintings to sculpture, and gold and silverware, as well as decorative arts with a special focus on Portuguese, European and Oriental Art.
Comprising over 50.000 objects that span from the 2nd century until the early 19th century, MNAA’s collection has the largest number of art works classified by the State as “National Treasures”. In its various sections, it also has a number of major works of art in the context of the world artistic heritage.

MNAA’s mission includes the preservation of the cultural objects for which it is responsible, its presentation to the public, the production of knowledge through scientific, historical and artistic research and its transmission to the community.
MNAA usually cooperates with Portuguese and International Universities, with Museums and Research Centres, in research related with its collections, namely about artists and works of art that are represented in them. The Museum organizes exhibitions and produces publications regularly, thus making knowledge accessible to the public.
DGPC has participated in a number of European Union granted projects, such as:

• 2019 – 2022: ARIADNEplus – Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Data Networking in Europe – plus (Grant agreement ID: 823914)
• 2018-2020: Learning and teaching museums. Training program for volunteers in the Roman Museums (Projeto 2018-1-ES01-KA204-050581)
• 2016-2020: The EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project – Museums and Community; concepts, experiences and sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean (Grant agreement ID: 693669)
• 2016-2019: – STORM – Safeguarding Cultural Heritage through Technical and Organizational Resources Management, (Grant agreement ID: 700191)