Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Liberdade to feature flashy, purpose-built premises, though the complex also incorporates
the old headquarters of the Dean of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
Praça da Liberdade 450 • Mon & Wed-Sun 9am-9pm • Free •
T
31 3431 9400,
W
bb.com.br/cultura
The grand sandy-coloured building on the east side of Praça da Liberdade contains
the
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
, an atmospheric location with a wide range of
temporary art exhibitions sponsored by the central bank. The building itself opened
in 1930 to house the Secretaria de Segurança e Assistência Pública, with its original,
imposing granite staircase and Art Nouveau stained glass still intact, and its wonderful
airy inner courtyard now topped with a glass roof.
2
Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto
Av Prudente de Morais 202 • Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 10am-4pm • Free •
T
31 3342 1268,
W
amigosdomhab.com.br • Bus #8103
(marked “Nova Floresta/Santa Lúcia”) from Av Amazonas between Rua Espírito Santo and Rua dos Caetés; if you ask the conductor for the
Museu Histórico, you'll be dropped on Av do Contorno, a block away, from where there are signs to the museum
Just outside the city centre, the
Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto
usually hosts interesting
temporary exhibits on aspects of city history (everything from football to the history
of the original settlement of Curral del Rei), though don't expect much to be labelled
in English. The modern part of the museum houses a small café and the changing
galleries, while the leafy garden area outside contains old train engines, carriages and
a rare Minas
fazenda
(farmhouse), the
Fazenda do Leitão
, built in 1883 with a lovely
wooden veranda and now a sort of monument to the region's old way of life. Exhibits
inside highlight how folks used to live in Curral del Rei and Belo in the 1950s and
1990s, through antique furniture, photos and mediocre artwork.
Pampulha
Some 10km north of the centre (an hour or so by city bus; R$30-40 by taxi), the
wealthy district of
Pampulha
is best known for the Mineirão football stadium (see box,
p.147) and the complex of Modernist buildings and attractions set around the
Lagoa da
Pampulha
, a moderately attractive artifical lake rich in birdlife. Despite a growing algae
problem and a fair amount of pollution, the lake harbours cormorants, the moorhen-
like common gallinule, grebes, ibis, egrets, herons and even large
capybara
, the fat,
beaver-like creature you might spy basking on the lakeshore (alligators also live in the
lake, but it's rare to see them). The lake was opened in 1938 as a reservoir, but in 1940
then-mayor of Belo Horizonte,
Juscelino Kubitschek
, commissioned architect
Oscar
Niemeyer
, creator of Brasília, and landscape designer
Roberto Burle Marx
, to build a
complex of buildings around it to create a leisure hub for the rapidly expanding city.
Things didn't quite work out: it was years before the São Francisco church was actually
used, the
yacht club
(still there) was defunct after the lake was considered too polluted
for watersports, and today the area is a posh residential district - a development which
Niemeyer and Marx, with their socialist ideals, were presumably horrified by.
Casa do Baile
Av Otacilio Negrao de Lima 751 • Tues-Sun 9am-7pm • Free •
T
31 3277 7443,
W
pbh.gov.br/cultura
he curvaceous
Casa do Baile
(“house of dance”) was designed by Niemeyer in
1942 to be a dance hall, but like most of the other buildings around the lake it
didn't serve its original purpose for long. Today it stands as the grandly titled
Centro
de Arquitetura e Urbanismo
, displaying small temporary exhibits on Brazilian
architecture and urban design (Niemeyer also led the 2002 renovation). Nearby is
the
tourist o
ce
(see p.148), designed to be a boat terminal in the 1940s, but
serving as a bar from 1954 to 2007.
