Museum of Aveiro / Santa Joana
Dominican Convent of Jesus turned national museum, with a gilded Baroque church and Saint Joana's tomb.
The museum occupies the Convent of Jesus, a Dominican house for women founded in Aveiro in 1458. Its best known resident was Joana, daughter of King Afonso V, who entered in 1472 and remained until her death in 1490; she was beatified in 1693 and is venerated as Saint Joana Princesa. The convent was closed under the nineteenth-century suppression of religious houses, and in 1911 the state turned the buildings and their contents into a public museum, keeping the cloisters, choirs and refectory as part of the route.
Visitors follow two linked circuits: the monumental one through the convent church, lower choir, chapter house and cloister, and a permanent display of painting, sculpture, goldwork and tiles gathered from the region's religious houses. The church interior is covered in carved and gilded woodwork of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The marble mosaic tomb of Saint Joana, designed by João Antunes, stands in the lower choir, and the collection includes a rare fifteenth-century portrait of the princess.
Highlights
- Carved and gilded Baroque woodwork throughout the convent church
- Marble mosaic tomb of Saint Joana designed by João Antunes
- Fifteenth-century portrait of Princess Joana
- Renaissance cloister, lower choir and tiled refectory
![[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]title QS:P1476,en:"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"label QS:Len,"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/500px-Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
