Museu Nacional de Belas Artes

About this place

The National Museum of Fine Arts fills an eclectic-style building on Avenida Rio Branco, designed in 1908 by the Spaniard Adolfo Morales de los Ríos for the School of Fine Arts, next to the Theatro Municipal on Cinelândia square. The museum was founded in 1937 and opened in 1938, but its collection goes back further: when the Portuguese court moved to Rio in 1808, King John VI brought part of the royal collection with him, and most of it stayed in Brazil after he left. The collection holds more than 20,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, the richest anywhere in 19th-century Brazilian art, alongside European works and a library of about 19,000 titles. The building was listed as national heritage in 1973. After six years closed for restoration, the museum has reopened only a small part: the second plaster-cast gallery, free to enter, with the full reopening planned for late 2026. Until then the ornate façade is worth a look from the street, and the full visit is worth saving for when the works end.