Museum of Mines and Metal - MM Gerdau

(Former State Secretariat for Interior and Education)

The building of the Museu das Minas e Metal 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 and Landscape Ensemble of Praça da Liberdade, and by the municipality of Belo Horizonte in 1994.

The “pink building,” as it is popularly known, has a beautiful hall that is accessed from the square level through a granite staircase. At the top of this staircase are columns of colored limestone, similar to pink marble. From the hall comes a wrought iron staircase. It is a work of art that was installed by means of an innovative system for the time, the joly, that allows for supporting its own weight. Of the same origin are the wrought-iron beams that support the ceiling of the hall, as well as the counters of the facade.

All of these iron artifacts were part of a lot commissioned and purchased by the New Capital Construction Commission, which were designed in Belgium and manufactured in Germany by the companies Societé Anonime des Ateliers de Constructions, Forges et Aciéries de Bruges and Eisenwerk Jolie.

The building, designed by the architect José de Magalhães, had its construction initiated in 1895, executed by the construction commission, and was inaugurated in 1897. It has an eclectic style influenced by Neoclassical. The building has three floors and a basement, and a zinc dome with an area of 4,962 square meters.

Internally, the decor follows the Neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles. It has wall paintings and marble columns, with granite floors, hydraulic tile, marble and wooden parquet, presenting beautiful drawings. It preserves one of the first elevators of the city, dated of 1926, still in operation. It housed the State Secretariat for Interior until 1930, when he became the State Secretariat for Education until 2010.

It was then transformed and inaugurated as a museum, already fully restored and enlarged, with an annex of about 881 square meters, with architectural design by Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Pedro Mendes da Rocha. The museum has a museographic conception by Marcelo Dantas and incorporated the collection of the Djalma Guimarães Mineralogy Museum, which had already incorporated the collection of the old permanent fair of samples, which existed in Belo Horizonte, and operated in a building that was demolished, on the terrain where today the city bus station is located.

In the total area of the equipment, there are 44 attractions on the subject mines and metal, distributed in 18 rooms, widely using technology  in the museographic design. With a large collection of mining and steelmaking, two of the state’s major economic activities, it documents the history of Minas Gerais and its culture and thus celebrates the identity of its people.