Paço de São Cristóvão

The great neoclassical facade of the Paço de São Cristóvão looks every bit like a seat of European royal authority transplanted to the tropics. But before it was an imperial palace, this hill was simply a pleasant country estate known as the Quinta da Boa Vista, named for its sweeping view across Guanabara Bay.

In 1808, the Portuguese royal court fled Napoleon and landed in Rio de Janeiro, desperately short of grand residences. Seeing an opportunity, a wealthy merchant named Elias Antônio Lopes offered his manor house to the Prince Regent, Dom João. Lopes had made a fortune in the transatlantic slave trade, and giving away a hilltop country home was a shrewd political move. The crown accepted, and the merchant's private retreat was quickly drafted into royal service.

Over the next several decades, three generations of the House of Bragança steadily rebuilt it. English builder John Johnston added formal colonnades, Portuguese painter Manuel da Costa decorated the rooms, and French architect Pierre-Joseph Pézerat eventually bound everything together behind the pale neoclassical facade we see today. The building witnessed the birth of a nation: Dom Pedro the First signed decisive acts of Brazilian independence here, and within these same halls in 1831, he signed his abdication, leaving the throne to his five-year-old son.

When the monarchy fell in 1889, the palace found an entirely new role. Brazil's republican founders held their Constituent Assembly inside its chambers to draft a new constitution. Then, in 1892, the building was handed over to the Museu Nacional, trading imperial throne rooms for fossil halls and anthropological collections. What began as a merchant's country retreat ended up housing Latin America's oldest scientific institution.