Settlement collection
The state's finest.
Achim Berg — CC BY 4.0 · Achim Berg — CC BY 4.0 · Achim Berg — CC BY 4.0
The Visconde de São Leopoldo Historical Museum is a private, non-profit museum in São Leopoldo that holds the state's most important collection of objects, images and documents on German immigrant settlement, and it was the first museum of German immigration in Brazil. It was founded on 20 September 1959 on the initiative of the historian and teacher Telmo Lauro Müller, who ran it for forty-eight years. The story it tells begins on 25 July 1824, when thirty-nine immigrants from Hamburg arrived at an old government farm in São Leopoldo to become the first German settlers in the state. Over time its collection grew to cover the city's wider history too, including the Indigenous and African people who lived here before the Germans. Its present home on Rua Dom João Becker dates from 1985, and the museum also runs the «Immigrant House» in the old farm building, listed as national heritage since 1992, with furniture, utensils and clothing of the first settlers.
The state's finest.
National heritage.
The first settlers arrive.
Rua Dom João Becker, São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul
The old farm building that received the first settlers, showing their furniture and tools.
