Zeppelin Hangar at Santa Cruz Air Force Base, Airship hangar at Santa Cruz Air Force Base, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Zeppelin Hangar at Santa Cruz Air Force Base is a vast steel structure that once housed large airships for operations and maintenance. The facility features two enormous gates designed specifically for moving these aircraft in and out of the hangar.

The hangar was built in 1936 under President Getúlio Vargas as a base for German airship operations. After hosting these aircraft until 1937, the facility ceased its active role in transatlantic aviation.

The hangar's name comes from the German airships it served. Ground crews nicknamed the aranhas (spiders) held the mooring cables, and the site was named Aeroporto Bartolomeu de Gusmão after Brazil's aviation pioneer. Since 1998 it has been listed by IPHAN under inscription 550, and it appeared in the 1997 film For All - O Trampolim da Vitória.

The hangar sits within a military air base roughly 50 kilometers from downtown Rio de Janeiro and is reachable by car. Visitors should verify access in advance since it remains an active military facility with restricted areas.

The hangar's dimensions are 274 metres long, 58 metres high and 58 metres wide. When the first airships arrived, two hundred men nicknamed aranhas (spiders) held their cables on the apron to help moor them. The building was listed by IPHAN in 1998 under inscription number 550.