The Convent of San Payo, founded at the end of the 14th century by religious from Galicia, belonging to the Congregation of Friars Minor of S. Francisco, it was the fourth Franciscan Convent to be built in Portugal. In this place of difficult religious life, despite the difficulties, it managed to avenge a community over the centuries, becoming a space of sanctity and contemplative life on the rocky shores of Ribeira do Minho. The harshness of isolation, the successive looting and political impositions over the centuries, contributed to the fact that the convent gradually fell into ruins and finally abandoned in the middle of the 19th century. Until one day the sculptor José Rodrigues (re) finds him ...

The Convento San Payo, for the careful restoration that was the object,
it constitutes a museum in itself, for conserving and patenting a rare specimen of conventual architecture and observant Franciscanism.

Inhabited by one of the most notable references in contemporary Portuguese art, it has become a kind of museum - studio. The collection of sculptures, drawings and paintings, owned by the author who integrates him, in a collection of a few hundred pieces, allows the visitor to get to know José Rodrigues' work better.