Ricardo Brennand Institute, State of Pernambuco, Brazil

5Peter B 5:00 PM Mar 30, 2014

can confirm
in any case, also the people are friendlier opposite foreigner - I live Brasil since March 14 in Paulista PE and can say only positive at the moment

5DPaulsenD 5:00 PM Mar 2, 2014

Alice in Wonderland
Some Brazilian friends of ours in Recife invited us to visit the Instituto Ricardo Brennand on the last Tuesday of the month. They said it was free then, Which turned out to be true, but we've been to one museum here that was two rooms and maybe 18 paintings. So we weren't expecting much and I didn't have time to research it. We rode for about a half hour, switching buses, and got off. We walked through a typical Brazilian poor neighborhood with the sidewalks all buckling and falling apart for about six blocks and was glad it wasn't dark. I really wasn't expecting the museum to be much. I mean, this was a crowded part of the city. . .how big could the building be that housed the museum, and what could it hold? Suddenly the crowded buildings stopped and we all stood with our mouths gaping. Ahead of us, stretching for a kilometer, was a brick road lined with 300 trees. A little topless trolley picked us up and dropped us off at a castle on a 77 acre landscaped estate. I felt like I had been dropped into a different world. . .primarily the 1600s and 1700s when the Dutch were in Recife. This museum holds one of the largest collections of arms and armory in the world, not to mention beautiful statues, some original, some copies (Michelangelo's David greeted us) , 1/10th of the collection of Franz Post paintings, and life- sized images. The museum is a combination of the Tower of London, the Louvre, Versailles, and the Rodin museum. Click on "Virtual Tour" on the bottom of the official site to get a preview of this amazing museum that was built by the Englishman Richard Brennand in 2000 to house his vast collections.