Lisbon’s Royal Treasure Museum to Host 2nd Crowns and Tiaras Colloquium

By Annie Davidson Watson | August 03, 2026

The Royal Treasure Museum in Lisbon will host the second edition of its Treasures International Colloquium this November, a two-day gathering of royal jewelry scholars centered on the theme “Crowns and Tiaras.”

Held Nov. 13–14 at the museum’s home in the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda under the patronage of the president of the Republic of Portugal, the event will feature presentations and panel discussions on royal and imperial crowns, diamond tiaras, and gem-set hat and hair jewelry. Sessions are expected to touch on provenance research, historic cutting and setting techniques, and gem identification methods as applied to royal pieces.

Just a few of the confirmed speakers: Linda Borsch and Matthew Cumbie, conservators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Maurício Vincente Ferreira Júnior, director of the Imperial Museum in Rio de Janeiro; and Ellen van Bork and Suzanne van Leeuwen, metals conservator and curator and conservator of jewelry, respectively, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Portugal’s Infanta Maria Francisca, Duchess of Coimbra, will appear at the opening ceremony.

The colloquium will mark the bicentenary of the death of Portugal’s King Dom João VI of the Braganza Dynasty with a dedicated presentation on the royal crown made in Brazil for his accession—a piece whose Brazilian origin speaks to broader questions of colonial-era gem supply chains and cross-Atlantic royal patronage that inform how period pieces with South American provenance are researched and valued today.

Delegates will get exclusive access to the Portuguese royal collections, closed to the public for the duration of the event. The Royal Treasure Museum is part of the draw: Its vault holds a thousand jewels of the former Portuguese Crown inside one of the largest museum safes in the world, a 775-square-meter gold-lined vault with three floors and two five-ton doors.

The inaugural 2024 edition, which covered royal gems and jewelry more broadly, was significantly oversubscribed, according to museum executive director Nuno Vale, and early bird registration for 2026 has already closed. The organizers haven’t yet specified delegate capacity, general registration pricing, or whether trade professionals outside the museum world can attend alongside curators; those details—along with any livestream option for those unable to travel to Lisbon—are expected to be confirmed as the full program is finalized.

(Photo courtesy of The Royal Treasure Museum)

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