The Hat Museum offers a virtual visit to its renewed permanent, bilingual and free exhibition.
This virtual tour will allow visitors from any part of the world to get to know this unique heritage of the Portuguese hat-making industry.
The Hat Museum has a virtual visit to its renewed permanent exhibition, a renovation that resulted from funding from the Portuguese Network of Museums' Support Program for Museums - ProMuseus, a financial support program for Museums accredited to the Portuguese Network of Museums not dependent on the central administration, which the Museum applied for in 2023 and which was fully covered, in the areas of accessibility e inclusion.
The virtual tour will allow visitors from any part of the world to get to know this unique heritage of the Portuguese hat-making industry.
At the same time, the Museum will keep accessible on its website the virtual tour of the previous permanent exhibition, patented between 2005 and 2024. This option aims, on the one hand, to enhance the institutional memory of the Museum and, on the other hand, to allow visitors to follow the evolution of museological and museographic discourse over time. Because heritage is also built through its transformations, nothing is lost: the memory of the journey made is preserved by recording the history of the museum itself, and it creates the possibility to compare different ways of interpreting and communicating the history of hat-making.
Available in Portuguese and English, the new virtual tour follows the same route as the physical exhibition. It begins with the history of the industry in São João da Madeira, contextualizing the decisive role of this activity in the economic and social development of the city. It continues with the history of the Empresa Industrial de Chapelaria, whose old factory now houses the Museum, and then presents one of the questions that most arouses the curiosity of visitors: how to make a hat. The visit also includes content dedicated to the production of straw hats and the history of the Aliança Manufactora de Chapéus de Palha, broadening understanding about the diversity of the Portuguese industry.
In addition to the content present at the physical exhibition, the virtual tour offers complementary resources that enrich the experience. Visitors will be able to explore images and historical documents from different eras from the Documentation Center, read excerpts from the historical novel Unhas Negras by João da Silva Correia, watch videos of working machines and listen to oral memory testimonies from former factory workers.
The platform also provides information about the machines displayed, including their brands, countries of origin and chaptology factories where they were in operation, as well as various tools used throughout the production process.
In addition to the visit to the exhibition, the platform gathers practical information about the Museum, including opening hours, accessibility conditions and other elements useful for preparing a face-to-face visit.
Virtual tours are now playing a key role in democratizing access to cultural heritage. They allow to overcome geographical, physical and temporal barriers, reaching the public who, for different reasons, cannot go to the Museum. They are also an educational, research and cultural promotion tool, helping to increase the visibility of collections and strengthen the link between communities and their heritage.
With this initiative, the Hat Museum becomes even more accessible, open and global. From anywhere in the world, researchers, students, former workers of industry, contemporary clockmakers and all those interested will be able to discover, (re)visit and deepen their knowledge about an activity that has profoundly marked the identity of São João da Madeira.
The availability of the virtual tour in Portuguese and English is not only a result of the growing number of foreign visitors that the museum receives annually. It also reflects the growing international projection of the Hat Museum and the strengthening of its links to the global chapelry community. Over the past few years, through international temporary exhibitions, the Museum has developed a continuous work with contemporary artists, designers and hatters from various countries, affirming itself as a meeting space between history, present and future of the art of hat-making and millinery. These exhibitions, also accompanied by virtual visits, have contributed to bringing professionals, creators and enthusiasts of this art to the Museum. The English version of the virtual tour of the permanent exhibition thus emerges as a natural step in this journey, allowing the international community to discover not only contemporary creation but also historical roots, industrial and human that made São João da Madeira one of the most important cities in Europe.
The virtual visit was co-financed by the Regional Program of the North 2021-2027 (NORTE 2030), within the operation NORTE2030-2024-90 - Digitilization of Cultural Heritage and Networked Collections, contributing to the preservation, valorization and digital dissemination of the region’s cultural heritage.
If the virtual tour opens the doors of the Museum to the world, soon, the future digital collection platform will also open the reserves, archives and the wealth of heritage preserved by the institution. Soon it will be possible to consult online hats, machines, tools, documents, photographs and other testimonies of the history of the chapellery, transforming the Hat Museum into a global resource for research and education. Many of the pieces that, for reasons of space or conservation, cannot be permanently exhibited will become accessible digitally, allowing the public to reveal a significant part of the heritage usually invisible. In this way, the Museum goes beyond the physical limits of the building and makes its collections available to anyone, anywhere in the world.
Descubra a visita virtual em www.museudachapelaria.pt/en/virtual-tours
