Goa Museum

Goa State Museum

  • Location : Panaji, Goa
  • Timings : Its open daily except Saturday and Sunday from 9:00 am to 1:15 pm and 2:00 pm to 5:30 pm

This museum is a well laid out museum has several galleries featuring Christian art, Hindu and Jain sculpture and bronzes, and paintings from all over the India. The museum is still being developed so the present collection is small, but worthwhile. It is near the bus stand at Goa.

Archeological Museum and Portrait Gallery

  • Location : Old Goa
  • Timings : Its open daily except Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 Am to 5:00 without lunch break

This used to be a wing of the old Franciscan monastery and was converted to a museum in 1964. On exhibit are a selection of pre-colonial and post colonial artifacts. The main hall has at its entrance a huge statue of Alfonso de Albuquerque, that once stood in Old Goa and subsequently at the Azad Maidan in Panaji. It was removed after liberation to the museum. The other areas are the “Key Gallery”, the ” Portrait Gallery” and the “Sculpture Gallery”.

The “key gallery” has among other things a statue of the famous Portuguese poet, Luis Camoes, holding a copy of “Os Lusíadas”. This statue was also moved to the museum following liberation.

The ” Portrait Gallery” occupies the first floor of the museum and has over sixty paintings of the Portuguese Governors and Viceroys that ruled Goa beginning with the first- Dom Joao de Castro( 1545-48 ) and other notables like Dom Vasco da Gama ( 1524) and the only Goan Governor, Bernardo Peres da Silva ( 1835 )and the longest serving governor, Jose Ferreira de Pestano ( 1844-51 and 1864-70). There is even a portrait of Portugal’s right wing prime minister and dictator, Antonio Salazar.

The “Sculpture Gallery” contains some artifacts dating to the pre-colonial era. There are a lot of Stone sculptures and idols dating back to the Kadamba years and also a stone pillar brought from San Thome, Madras , the site of martyrdom of St Thomas.

Archives Museum Goa

  • Location : Old Goa
  • Timings : Its open daily except Saturday, Sunday & Public Holidays. from 9.30 am To 1.00 pm And 2.00 pm To 5.30 pm.5:00 pm

This Museum is housed at a new Building at the Patto Plaze near the Ourem creek, Panaji. The most noteworthy feature of Panjim’s State Archeological Museum is its imposing size, which stands in glaringly inverse proportion to the scale of the collection inside. In their bid to erect a structure befitting a state capital, it’s status-obsessed bureaucrats ignored the fact that there was precious little to put in it.

The only rarities to be found amid the lame array of temple sculpture, hero stones and dowdy colonial era artifacts (also spelt as artefacts) are a couple of beautiful Jain bronzes rescued by customs and excise officials from smugglers and, on the ground floor, photos of the prehistoric rock carvings at Usgalimal.