The Northeast - The Rough Guide to Brazil - page 314

digestible. Local painter Ambrósio Amorim (1922-2003) features heavily, as does the
naïve cityscapes of José Erasmo Campello, and there are portraits of local poet
Gonçalves Dias and writer João Francisco Lisboa.

Casa do Nhôzinho
Rua Portugual 185 • Tues-Sun 9am-6pm • Free • T 98 3218 9951
he Casa do Nhôzinho , an annexe of the Casa de Cultura Popular (see below), is a large,
cellar-like space with wood-beam ceilings and stone floors, housing a collection of
model boats and an exhibit on buriti palm crafts that segues into a store selling
products made by a local cooperative. The centre is named after folksy buriti palm
sculptor Antônio Bruno Pinto Nogueira (aka Nhôzinho), who died in the city in 1974.

Centro de Pesquisa de História Natural e Arqueologia
Rua do Giz 59 • Mon-Fri 8-11am & 2-4pm • Free • T 98 3218 9906
One of the quirkiest museums in the old centre, the Centro de Pesquisa de História
Natural e Arqueologia is worth a quick peek, with a slightly tatty dinosaur exhibit
downstairs (scale models and fossil finds in Maranhão), and a more interesting, and
better maintained, gallery upstairs highlighting pre-Columbian Tupi-Guarani artefacts
found in the state. There's also a small room dedicated to the present-day Ka'apor and
Canela indigenous cultures of Maranhão, though English labelling is minimal.

Centro de Cultura Popular (Casa da Festa)
Rua do Giz 221 • Tues-Sun 9am-6pm • Free • T 98 3218 9924
Housed in another atmospheric old mansion, the Centro de Cultura Popular Domingos
Vieira Filho (aka Casa da Festa) is primarily dedicated to the city's African-influenced
religious festivals and rituals, with three levels of displays of costumes, folk art and
instruments used for Bumba-meu-boi, candomblé rituals and the like.

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Memorial do Centro Histórico
Rua da Estrela 562 • Mon-Fri 9am-6pm • Free • T 98 3231 9075
Housed in the nineteenth-century Solar dos Vasconcelos, the Memorial do Centro Histórico
boasts a couple of small but interesting exhibits (assuming you can read Portuguese). The
first room is dedicated to the restoration of the centro histórico , with scale models of the
main projects, while the second gallery contains models and information boards about the
region's iconic sailing boats - you'll see the real thing in the bay.

Cafuá das Mercês
Rua Jacinto Maia 54 • Mon-Fri 9am-5pm • R$2
Down at the southern end of the centro histórico , in one of the scru er parts of town,
lies the tiny Cafuá das Mercês , an eighteenth-century “slave house”. Slaves who survived
the journey across from West Africa were marched up here from the harbour and kept in
the holding cells until they could be auctioned off in the small square outside - note the
narrow slit windows. Today it contains two small exhibit rooms dedicated to Afro-
Brazilian culture with just a handful of displays - the old pelourinho (whipping post)
in the courtyard outside is a stark reminder of the original purpose of the building.

Convento do Mercês
Rua da Palma 502 • Mon-Fri 8am-7pm, Sat 8am-noon • Free • T 98 3221 3724, W www.fmrb.ma.gov.br
Thanks to the omniscient largesse of the Sarney clan (see p.315), the seventeenth-
century Convento do Mercês , long abandoned, opened as a lavish art space and museum
in 1990, part of the “Fundação José Sarney”. In 2009 the complex was handed back
to the state, but after a series of ongoing (and confusing) court cases, allegations of
corruption and re-launches, the Fundação da Memória Republicana Brasileira is currently
running the space, with a permanent multimedia exhibit (“Memória da República