GEOCACHING POINT
(nearby)
GC8RN8B-#6 PR4-MAC - SOS6 - MEIOS AÉREOS
GC71J2G- Fonte Velha da Ortiga
GC5Y359-Bebedouro de Animais de Ortiga
GC4DDY3-L.R.M.O.
Mission
The Ortiga Museum Centre (NMO) is the result of a happy meeting between the will of the Ortiga community to preserve and enhance local heritage and the strategy of the Municipality of Mação, through its Museum, to support and strengthen spaces of memory, to bring the conservation and enhancement of collections closer to their places of origin and, above all, to promote processes of shared knowledge building.
The NMO's mission is to make known the history of Ortiga and the Tagus basin region in which it is located, managing the historical and cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, of the Ortiga community and the territory, including the identification, collection and incorporation, inventorying, conservation and restoration of the museum collection, the appropriate interpretation and consequent exhibition for study, education and leisure, thus promoting the socio-cultural development of communities and visitors.
Likewise, the NMO will deepen knowledge and foster respect for the historical and cultural heritage of Ortiga, the municipality of Mação and the entire river basin, actively involving Ortiguenses, local communities and scientific communities interested in the ancestral social heritage of the Iberian peoples linked to the Tagus.
The NMO starts from the territory, including its natural elements and the structures built by man in order to adapt it to his needs, as a landscape of cultural interest. A cultural landscape that explains the historical evolution of a riverside community that, very much marked by its proximity to the River Tagus, didn't limit itself to fishing and diversified its efforts in search of means of subsistence in other areas, with a strong focus on small-scale agriculture, forestry activities - resin and sawmill workers, the trades needed to make equipment for those economic areas and for people's physical well-being and, towards the end of the 19th century, the professions and activities linked to the railway.
Organically and financially dependent on the Municipality of Mação, and within the framework of the Museum of Rock Art and the Sacred of the Tagus Valley, the NMO is orientated towards a museology of proximity to the territory and the population, who are not only beneficiaries but also co-responsible for the project.
The aim is for the community in which the NMO is located to intervene in its choices and use its space, revisiting it and recognising the important role it plays in preserving its own social heritage and explaining the historical and cultural context in which its identity was formed.
In this context, the Ortiga Museum Centre incorporates cultural assets - both tangible and intangible - that exist in the Ortiga area, enhancing them through work related to identification, collection, research, inventory, exhibition, interpretation and conservation. The first exhibition is already the result of this involvement, with pieces donated by the community and an exhibition organisation that remains open to new contributions: a renewable and changeable exhibition that will always combine the community's choices and the museological support of the municipal museum.
It is also intended, from a perspective of technical, scientific and resource cooperation, and with the Tagus River as an essential uniting element, that this Municipal Museum Centre will network with other museums in the Iberian Tagus river basin, from the source to the mouth, and with all those who share the same objectives at a transnational level: working to defend, enhance and disseminate the cultural landscapes of the Tagus River, in its material and immaterial expressions.
Finally, the Ortiga Museum Centre will endeavour, within its capacities and competences, to accompany the work of researchers from the most varied areas who are dedicated to the study of this territory, also providing adequate support and the necessary collaboration to schools and other public or private educational entities, fostering knowledge and respect for historical heritage, always with an eye to the future.
Luiz Oosterbeek and João de Matos Filipe