The main house
A date on the door.
Matteusmoreira — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dnunciatelli — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Raphael Igor — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Dianarchitect — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Matteusmoreira — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Matteusmoreira — CC BY-SA 4.0
Sítio Morrinhos is an architectural complex in São Paulo's North Zone, made up of an eighteenth-century main house and annexes from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It belongs to the «Historic Houses» network of the Museum of the City of São Paulo and also houses the São Paulo Archaeology Centre, whose collection runs to around a million pieces. Research in the 1980s showed that the main house was built in 1702, a date carved into the wood of its main door, by a wealthy paulista linked to mining. The property served as a resting farm and country house where rural work such as pottery, crop growing and cattle raising was carried out, relying on the labour of enslaved people. In 1902, two hundred years after it was built, the complex was sold at auction and became a weekend retreat for the monks of a city monastery until the late 1940s, then passed to a private company before becoming municipal property and a museum. It makes a quiet visit that shows rural São Paulo life before the megacity swallowed it.
A date on the door.
A million pieces.
Old São Paulo.
North Zone, São Paulo
A 1702 farmhouse that survived inside the megacity.