The National Museum of Brazil (Museu Nacional), located in the Quinta da Boa Vista park neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, is a centenarian museum and research center that is linked to the Ministry of Education. The National Museum houses one of the largest exhibitions of the Americas, including a collection of animals, insects, precious minerals, a vast collection of aboriginal utensils, Egyptians mummies, meteorites, fossils, local South American archaeological artifacts in addition to countless other important findings.
Founded under the name of the Royal Museum by King Dom João VI of Portugal in 1818, the National Museum was established in a royal initiative to foster scientific research in Brazil, which until that time was an vast colony that was relatively unexplored by scientific disciplines, making the National Museum the oldest scientific institution in the country and the largest museum of natural history and anthropology in all of Latin America. As it initially housed mostly plant and animal specimens with many different types of birds, the old building where the National Museum was located Rio Centro was widely referred to as the “House of the Birds”.
The National Museum, under the management of the University of Brazil since 1946, boasts one of the largest scientific research libraries in Rio de Janeiro and offers a variety of graduate courses in subjects ranging from anthropology, sociology, botany, geology, zoology and paleontology.
Address: The National Museum of Brazil is located on Quinta da Boa Vista, São Cristóvão, 20940-040 – Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
Phone: The National Museum of Brazil can be reached by telephone at (021) 2562-6900.
