Mercado de Escravos (Slave Market Museum)

The Mercado de Escravos is a small museum in the old town of Lagos that confronts one of the darkest chapters of Portuguese and European history. It occupies the arcaded building on the Praça Infante D. Henrique that tradition associates with the slave market of Lagos, and it tells the story of the town's role in the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade.

In August 1444, captives seized on the coast of West Africa were brought to Lagos and sold in a public market here, an event described by the royal chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara, who recorded the anguish of families being separated. It is regarded as the first large-scale public sale of enslaved Africans in Europe, and it took place under the patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator, whose statue stands in the square outside. In the centuries that followed, Portugal became one of the largest participants in the transatlantic slave trade.

The museum, opened by the municipality in 2016 as a centre on the slavery route, presents this history through objects, documents, maps and multimedia displays, and explains the place of enslaved Africans in Lagos and in Portuguese society. An important part of the story comes from archaeology: in 2009, excavations at the Valle da Gafaria, just outside the old walls, uncovered the remains of more than a hundred and fifty Africans dumped in what had been a rubbish pit in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one of the earliest archaeological records of the slave trade in Europe.

A visit is short but sobering and gives important context to the Age of Discovery story told elsewhere in Lagos. The museum is in the heart of the old town, next to the statue of Prince Henry and a few steps from the Igreja de Santa Maria and the waterfront, so it is easy to combine with a walk along the city walls. Opening hours and the modest admission fee can change, so check before visiting.