Banco do Brasil Cultural Center

(Former State Secretariats for Interior, Justice, Public Security and Social Defense)

The current CCBB building is part of the civic center of the state administration of the founding of the new capital. It was registered by the state in 1977, as part of the Architectural Ensemble of Praça da Liberdade, and by the municipality of Belo Horizonte in 1994.

The building is located at Praça da Liberdade, 450. Designed by architect Luiz Signoreli, it was built in 1926 and was inaugurated in 1930. It has an eclectic style, influenced by the Neoclassical, already in the passage to Art Deco. The building has four floors, a terrace and a basement. In the main façade, its center is highlighted by the insertion of giant columns of Doric order, corresponding to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors.

The building has a beautiful hall that is accessed from the level of the square by a granite staircase. At the top of this staircase is a large hall with marble flooring, a marble staircase with marble columns that hold up metal chandeliers and stand out in front of the first floor, a beautiful stained glass window, alluding to Justice. The staircase leads to the second floor and features artistic cast iron and gold metal guardrails. The building has an area of 12,000 square meters. The interior decoration is sober and elegant, with marble floors of various colors and wooden parquet, presenting beautiful drawings.

From 1930 onwards, it housed the State Secretariat for the Interior and Justice, from 1945, the State Secretariat for Public Security, until the year 2003, when the State Secretariat for Social Defense was created, which operated there until 2009. Also, the Attorney General’s Office operated on the first floor. During the period of exception that the country experienced in the 1930s and 1960s, it housed respectively the General Command of the Revolutionary Forces of the Revolution of 1930 and was a place of arrest, interrogation and torture of the Civil Police.

In 2013 it was inaugurated as a cultural space, already restored and suitable for this purpose, with project by Flávio Grillo. Of the total area of the equipment, today 8.000 m² are used. The large double-height rooms are used as exhibition halls, courses, lectures, with a multipurpose room (black box), theater with Italian stage, 339 m² patio and retractable glass cover, cafeteria and shop. It is one of the most visited cultural spaces in Brazil.