São José Liberto and the Pará Gem Museum

About this place

São José Liberto, also known as the «Jewellery Hub», is a cultural complex in Belém housed in a venerable building put up in 1749 as a Capuchin friary, with a long and changing history: after the friars were expelled in 1757 it became a powder store, then barracks for infantry, cavalry and artillery, a pottery and, in 1835, a hospital for the wounded of the Cabanagem revolt. In 1843 it became a public jail and remained one for about a hundred and fifty years, until it closed in 1998 after several riots. In 2002, after restoration, it reopened under its new name, «São José Freed», with a goldsmith's workshop and jewellery hub, the «Craftsman's House», an amphitheatre for events, the «Cell Memorial» telling of its past as a prison, and the «Freedom Garden». Its best-known part is the Pará Gem Museum, showing diamonds, amethysts, tourmalines and minerals hundreds of millions of years old, with a 2.5-tonne quartz druse in the entrance hall. The museum also displays ancient Tapajós and Marajoara pottery.