Cabangu Museum, Santos-Dumont's Birthplace

About this place

The Cabangu Museum, officially the «Santos-Dumont Birthplace Museum», stands on the old Cabangu farm about sixteen kilometres from the town of Santos Dumont in Minas Gerais, where the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont was born on 20 July 1873. The farm was state property, used as a base for building the railway across the Mantiqueira range, and his father, the engineer in charge of the works, lived there. The site was listed as national heritage in 1950. The museum preserves the house where he was born, with his personal belongings, photographs, historical documents and replicas of his inventions, and it also holds the ashes of Anésia Pinheiro Machado, the first woman to fly a plane in Brazil. The grounds protect a remnant of Atlantic Forest and its wildlife. The museum reopened in March 2026 after about ten months closed for works, and it opens Wednesday to Sunday from 9 am to 5 pm for a small fee.