Colombo House Porto Santo Museum

The Museum
The Casa Colombo Museu do Porto Santo is located in a coordinated set of constructions, today standardised by works from the 18th and 19th century. There is a long oral tradition that Christopher Columbus lived here when he passed through Porto Santo after his marriage to Filipa de Moniz, the daughter of the first Donee Captain of Porto Santo, Bartolomeu Perestrelo.

From the early 16th century it is a northern wall of the main building, having survived various works and where two Gothic windows appear.

The Museum opened to the public in 1989, since when it has undergone various works to adapt its museological contents. In 2004 it was totally restructured with the redefinition of its programmes.

Today on the ground floor, the reception/store and a temporary exhibition room are coordinated, usually dedicated to Portuguese maritime expansion or related themes as well as dialogue interventions with contemporary guest artists.

On the first floor, thematic areas have been organised into the four rooms available. The first room is dedicated to the Portuguese Expansion with the presentation of the strategic position of the Island of Porto Santo and of the archipelago of Madeira in the context of Portuguese maritime expansion marked by thematic panels with works of art and reference works. By way of example, the presence of a gilded bronze Processional Cross from an Iberian workshop in the late 15th century, evoking the principle of the expansion of the Christian faith as an argument for the new conquests overseas. This space also holds a Missal Stand, Namban, japanese from the Edo period in the early 17th century, representing the extent of the Portuguese expansion commenced right in the middle of the 15th century with the North African invasions and then Porto Santo and Madeira, advancing in 1543 to Japan.

The second room is dedicated to the increase of Spanish power in the world expansion and its position as the financier of the expedition by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The room holds a brief biography of the navigator and of his family links to Porto Santo, as well as a reference to his voyages of discovery of America. There is a Mexican silver tray from the mid-17th century, an Italian-Flemish Portrait of the navigator and a symptomatic black clay Bottle representing a Spanish conqueror shown as a divinity in a symptomatic cultural inversion in the Chimú ethnic group in Peru, from where the piece on display originates.

The third and fourth rooms are dedicated to the creation of the dutch colonial empire and the direct competition of the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires through the exhibition of part of the booty of the galleon from the Dutch East Indies Company Slot ter Hooge, which sank off the north of the island of Porto Santo in 1724. In the fourth room the visitor is asked: And If the Sloot ter Hooge hadn't sunk, what kind of goods would it have brought from the East? The answer is provided by the presence in its own display cabinet of silks, porcelains and spices.



Services:

Education
Educational services set up in a specific unit chiefly working with the schools and senior citizens. The Museum has a technician responsible for the educational area, carrying out activities related with the preferential themes of the Museum.

Library
It has a small documentation centre about Christopher Columbus and Portuguese Expansion and the History of the Archipelago.

Store
At the Museum Reception/Store there are products inspired by the collections of the Porto Santo Columbus House-Museum , as well as from other Museums in Madeira and informative material on the history of the building and its collections.

The Museum has open air Auditorium on a small gardened patio.