Learn About Our Own History
The Macao Historical Archives have existed for over fifty years. Some of our important dates are listed as follows:
1952: Founded as the “Macao General Archives” operating in the central office of the then Portuguese administration in Macao
1979: Renamed “Macao Historical Archives”, restructured and moved into the newly created Education and Culture Department
1983: Joined the International Council on Archives www.ica.org
1986: Moved to the newly created Cultural Institute (now Cultural Affairs Bureau))
1989: Macao’s archive legislation published, Decree-Law 73/89/M
1991: Cataloguing began using PORBASE, a Portuguese database
There are different kinds of collections in the Macao Historical Archives:
The Reading Room has a specialized library of titles relating to the history of Macao, China and East-West relations.