National Museum of Brazil
The national museum of Brazil
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| Established | 1818 |
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| Location | Quinta da Boa Vista in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Type | Natural history, ethnology and archaeology |
| Website | www.museunacional.ufrj.br |
Coordinates: 22°54′20.40″S 43°13′33.98″W / 22.9056667°S 43.2261056°W
The National Museum of Brazil (Portuguese: Museu Nacional) is a 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 (1769–1826) 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".
After that, with the marriage of D. João VI's son and Brazil's first Emperor, Dom Pedro I (1798–1834) with Princess Leopoldina of Austria, the Museum started to attract the greatest European naturalists of the 19th century, such as Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (1782–1867), Johann Baptist von Spix (1781–1826) and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868). Other European researchers who explored the country, such as Augustin Saint-Hilaire (1799–1853) and the Baron von Langsdorff (1774–1891), contributed for the collections of the Royal Museum.
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