Museu Aeroespacial

Long before these hangars housed museum collections, this wide stretch of ground in western Rio de Janeiro belonged to horses and dust. In the early twentieth century, Campo dos Afonsos was an army cavalry field. Aviation was still a precarious gamble made of spruce, wire, and sheer nerve, but in October 1911, an ambitious group gathered here to establish the Aeroclube Brasileiro, choosing Alberto Santos Dumont as their honorary president.

The real push to turn this flat plain into a permanent flying ground began in 1914, when Italian aviators helped set up the short-lived Escola Brasileira de Aviação. World War I quickly showed everyone that military aviation was no longer optional, so in 1919 Brazil brought in a French Military Mission to build a structured military flight academy from the grass up. For the next five decades, almost every military pilot in the country learned their craft right here. The hangars around you belonged to the Divisão de Instrução de Voo, the flight instruction division, echoing with roaring radial engines and the nerves of young cadets.

Then, in 1971, the Air Force Academy packed up and moved its operations inland to Pirassununga in São Paulo state. Suddenly, this historic birthplace faced a quiet emptiness. Rather than letting the site fade into forgotten barracks, the Ministry of Aeronautics decided to preserve it. Decree 72.553 formally established the Museu Aeroespacial, opening the doors to the public in October 1976.

That decision created something rare: an aerospace museum that does not simply exhibit old machines in a modern hall, but keeps them inside the very workshops and hangars where Brazilian military flight was born.