Casa Museum

This was the entry of a mansion that was owned by a Brazilian Banker. He and his wife had no children so after they died they left their home to the city of Sao Paulo with an endowment to make it into a Homes Museum.

This bench in the mud room was beautiful and wonderfully comfortable. It had three scooped out areas for sitting

I forgot to get a picture of the front of the house but you can get an idea of its size from the back view of the covered patio and the upstairs library

The covered patio looked like an outdoor dance hall or concert room.

The side patio has been transformed into a lovely outdoor dinning area. I imagine that this facility is also used for wedding receptions.

The blue over lapping umbrellas created an amazingly peaceful and cool atmosphere for outdoor dinning

African violets added a charming touch to all the tables. These trees are all over Sao Paulo. The amazing thing is I had one of these trees as a house plant for years and never realized that they grew into such gigantic trees. This is a small one.

An outdoor gallery surrounded the back yard.

It is amazingly peaceful in Sao Paulo once you get inside the walls and gates that surround most of the large homes and condominium skyscrapers in Sao Paulo. You instantly feel like you are in a different place, miles away from the busy streets. The trees and bushes and ground covers buffer the sound of the traffic.

Here we are inside the library upstairs.

The fire place seemed way too small to warm a room of this size but Sao Paulo does not have to deal with the long winters we enjoy in Utah. We usually have only had two or three cool days a week throughout the winter months that we have been here. All you really need is a warm sweater during the day and a nice cozy blanket or two at night.

The library was filled with the original furniture and paintings of the family that owned the home everything was quite opulent

There were cases filled with dishes.

and more dishes. Someone stays busy dusting and keeping all the silver shining and the crystal sparkling.

The bathtub was marble too. I must say that this was a little too much for my taste.

On the main floor of the house the bedrooms have become galleries of typical home furniture from various periods. Dormir (to sleep in Portuguese)
All different types of clothing storage pieces lined the walls on two sides of the room.

The other two walls displayed chairs and furniture meant for sitting. There was an other area that had a photographic and multimedia display of the homes and furnishings of the poor. The contrast was striking.

We parked about five or six blocks from the museum. The sidewalks are maintained by individual home and business owners. You need to look down as you walk to keep from tripping. Some walks are well maintained many are not, the sidewalks very considerably too.

I was quite surprised to see broken dishes used to create this sidewalk outside one of the homes we passed on the way to the car.

Soon we were back in Sao Paulo traffic, but thanks to our GPS we are able to find our way to the MTC no matter how many wrong turns we make. Even though there is a lot of traffic, and very slow going, you rarely ever have people honking their horns at you. The Brazilians are very polite drivers. All you have to do is roll down your window and wave your arm and they will let you merge into a lane.