Fodor's Expert Review Museu Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso

The former monastery cloisters now house this municipal museum and its excellent collection of modern Portuguese art, including important works by locally born modernist painter Souza-Cardoso. He pursued variations of fauvism, cubism, futurism, and other avant-garde tendencies, in 1906 sharing an apartment with fellow painter Amedeo Modigliani in Paris. He returned to Portugal in 1914 and died four years later at the age of 31. The museum also has some interesting archaeological pieces---the star attractions are the diabos (devils), a pair of 19th-century carved wooden figures connected with ancient fertility rites. They were venerated on St. Bartholomew's Day (August 24), when the devil was thought to run loose. In 1870, the Archbishop of Braga ordered them burned because of their pagan function. The São Gonçalo friars didn't go that far, but they did emasculate the male diabo.