National Museum of Brazil

The National Museum of Brazil is a centenarian museum and research institution, located in the Quinta da Boa Vista park in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The National Museum was established by the King of Portugal Dom João VI (17691826) in 1818 with the name of Royal Museum, in an initiative to stimulate scientific research in Brazil, which until then was an immense and wild colony, practically unexplored by science. Initially the Museum sheltered botanical and animal specimens, especially birds, what caused the old building where it was located in center of Rio de Janeiro, to be known by the population as the "House of the Birds".

The Museum shelters one of the largest exhibits of the Americas, consisting of animals, insects, minerals, aboriginal collections of utensils, Egyptians mummies and South American archaeological artifacts, meteorites, fossils and many other findings.