National Museum of Decorative Arts, National museum in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The National Museum of Decorative Arts occupies the former Errázuriz Palace, a French Neoclassical building designed by René Sergent. Its facade has four giant Corinthian columns across two storeys, a triangular pediment with relief sculpture, and a sculptural group on the roofline. Inside, a double-height Great Hall with a star-patterned maple and walnut parquet floor and five chandeliers sits at the centre of the house.
The neoclassical palace was designed in 1911 by French architect René Sergent as a private residence for Josefina de Alvear and Matías Errázuriz Ortúzar. The building was later converted into a museum to make the owners' extensive art collection available to the public.
The museum keeps the Errázuriz family's collection of European paintings, including works by El Greco, Camille Corot and Édouard Manet, alongside Sèvres and Meissen porcelain and Gobelins tapestries. The rooms retain their original domestic arrangement, such as the Louis XV-style antechamber with polished oak panelling and the Great Hall with a maple-and-walnut parquet floor in a star pattern.
The museum occupies the Errázuriz Palace at Avenida del Libertador 1902 in Recoleta, with the entrance reached from the avenue. It opens Tuesday to Sunday from 12:30 to 19:00 and is closed on Mondays. The main rooms are spread over the principal and first floors, reached by the marble staircase from the entrance hall.
The museum preserves the exact arrangement of rooms as the original owners personally designed them, setting it apart from typical exhibition museums. This approach allows visitors to understand the house genuinely as a home, not merely as a display space.
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