Museums
- The National Museum of Print (Museu Nacional da Imprensa), aims to record and recuperate Portugal's typographic and print heritage.
There is a permanent historical collection covering: type-foundry, type-setting, printing, and binding. It includes collections of punches, matrices and moulds for manual execution of type, a French machine of the brand Foucher, from 1906; a collection of typographic vignettes, used in the decoration and layout of the pages, as well as instruments such as composing sticks, galleys, and chases indispensable to the work of composition. There are two Linotype machines, the Monotype and Typograph; an 18th century wooden printing press, restored by the museum; a British Albion Press and a Stanhope of the French brand Alauzet, all in working order. There are other printing machines of the brands Minerva, Johannisberg, and Marinoni; a wooden lithographic press in wood from the nineteenth century, with its typical star wheel, accompanied by some lithographic stones; a manually operated German Mansfeld and an enormous four column binding press.
There is also a permanent exhibition celebrating Rodrigo Álvares, a Portuguese printer who in 1497 was using the technique of movable type, developed by Gutenberg in Germany about 50 years before. He printed two books in Porto at the request of the bishop of Porto, D. Diogo de Sousa, and is considered the “Portuguese Gutenberg”.
A unique new permanent exhibition, comprising some 160 miniature typographic pieces, shows the evolution of the media from Gutenberg to the present day. The pieces were produced by Américo da Silveira, a printer who studied in the workshops of São José in Porto, and spent 40 years constructing the miniatures. For this purpose he visited several printing machinery factories, mainly German, and corresponded with many companies to replicate the details of the machines he was reproducing.
Housed in a former prison, dating from 1767. The permanent exhibition contains rare examples of daguerreotypes, field and studio cameras; folding bellows, 35mm and twin-lens reflex cameras, including Rolleis and Hasselblad; a room devoted to Kodak and a collection of spy cameras and miniatures. There is also an example of an Escopette of Darier and an Ermanox, and a variety of photographic materials and equipment: flashes, exposure meters, chemicals and laboratory equipment. The center has regular exhibitions of photography and now 15,000 photographic images from the cpf archive are available online.
- Porto's Tram Museum contains a wide collection of trams from different eras, both imported and home produced, with replicas and originals. There is also a photographic collection illustrating the development of this urban public transport system and a shop containing books, catalogs, miniatures and postcards.