Fire and Resin Museum of Vila de Rei

In Vila de Rei, there is a small museum that is a must-see. Built in 2013, the Fire and Resin Museum is an educational and very appealing space that tells us about the relationship between man and fire and also about the forest and its activities.   1986, 2003 and 2017 are significant years in Vila de Rei. In these summers, the territory of the municipality was hit by violent fires that took 80 per cent of the area of the municipality. It therefore makes perfect sense that a Museum of Fire and Resin has been built here, a space where it is explained what fire is and the age-old relationship that man has with it.

Fire is destruction but it is also life. It was thanks to having mastered it that Man managed to take giant steps in his evolution. This love-hate relationship is told in the small but extremely interesting Fire and Resin Museum. Open to the public in 2013, it won the Portuguese Museology Association’s awards. A distinction that visitors understand. The space is didactic, the explanatory texts simple, the pieces interesting and the design frankly good. This is not a museum that simply exhibits pieces; it is rather a place where stories are told and sensations are transmitted.

Fire is a chemical reaction in which the molecules of combustible material are reduced to small fragments in the form of heat, gases and flames.

Here we find a collection of pieces that all have to do with fire or the forest. The museum curators chose from the collection of archaeological finds in the municipality those that are most significant and have the most to do with the history of the territory of Vila de Rei.

This is the case of the Bronze Age materials on display there. They were found during excavations in the Cerro do Castelo settlement and are around 3,000 years old. It is interesting, and those who visit the museum will know, that archaeologists have managed to demonstrate that this Bronze Age settlement was first destroyed by fire.

Everything here revolves around fire and the museum tells us about the relationship with fire throughout time, in its physical and spiritual dimensions, namely in the Middle Ages. Even the finds in the graves in the town’s old parish church have to do with fire. They are glass beads and rosaries that fire helped to shape. But then again, there is a history of flames at the site of the finds, which during the French invasions was desecrated and set on fire by soldiers from Paris.

Of course, forest fires are also present. At the end of the day they were the reason for the space’s existence. There is a room entirely dedicated to firemen and their combat, where old materials are exhibited and where an interesting documentary is shown, in which the message is very clear: after fire there is rebirth, of nature and of the lives of those who were affected by it.

That is why the last room is of a living forest, of a time when resin tappers walked through hills and valleys extracting the sap from the trees. These are memories of a time that the great fires have put an end to.

The Museum of Fire and Resin is a beautiful, didactic and very well structured space that deserves a visit when you are in Vila de Rei.

It is located right in the centre of the town, in Rua da Misericórdia. After visiting it, take a few more steps and visit the Municipal Museum, which has an interesting collection that shows us how the residence of wealthy farmers was at the end of the 19th century. It’s worth combining the two places in one visit.