Museu da Chapelaria

São João da Madeira made hats. From the nineteenth century it was the centre of Portuguese hat manufacture, and the Empresa Industrial de Chapelaria, which closed in 1996, is now the museum - kept in the factory buildings with the production line in place, so the visit follows the process in the order it happened: sorting rabbit and hare fur, forming the felt cone, shrinking and shaping it over blocks, dyeing, stiffening, ironing, trimming and boxing, on the original machines, several of which are run for demonstrations. The town has built a wider industrial tourism programme around this - working factory visits to shoemakers, pencil manufacture, hat production that continues elsewhere in the town, and a felt workshop - which is unusual in Portugal and worth combining with the museum. The collection also covers hats as social signals, and how the industry collapsed when people stopped wearing them.

What you actually see

• The production line - the whole hat-making sequence on original machinery in place.
• The demonstrations - several machines run to show the process working.
• The social history - hats as class and status markers, and the trade's collapse.
• The industrial circuit - the town's wider programme of working factory visits.

When to go

Year-round. One to two hours. Closed Mondays. Working factory visits in the town's circuit must be booked in advance and run on weekdays.

Honest expectations

Machine demonstrations are not continuous - ask when they run. The town is industrial and has little else for visitors. Factory circuit tours need booking days ahead and fill. Labelling is fuller in Portuguese.

Nearby

Santa Maria da Feira and its castle are north; Aveiro is south.