São Pedro da Cova Mining Museum

The Douro coalfield to the west of Porto produced anthracite from the 1790s until the 1990s. The museum of the São Vicente mine explores the history of coalmining in the region. It is in the Vila Verde, an accommodation building for miners designed by Barreiros Leal in a modernist style in 1963. It contained reading and games rooms, a dining room, bathrooms and bedrooms for over 50 miners. The mine closed in 1970 and the building was in use by the community and a museum from 1989. The museum was redeveloped in 2012. The collection includes geological samples and fossils, documentary records of the São Pedro da Cova coal company and objects including banners, lamps, helmets, wagons, models and a rail car for transporting coal to the electricity generating station. A walk 1km to the south takes visitors to the restored concrete headframe built in 1934 and the ruins of the coal sorting and washing plant.