Teatro Municipal, Colonial theatre in Ouro Preto, Brazil

Teatro Municipal is a theater with stone walls, a triangular roof peak, and three floors for different seating levels including main floor, boxes, and upper galleries. Inside, visitors find Austrian furnishings in the noble box, wooden spiral staircases climbing to higher levels, and roughly 300 seats total.

João de Souza Lisboa, a wealthy Vila Rica merchant, built the Casa da Ópera between 1769 and 1770; it opened on 6 June 1770, the birthday of King José I of Portugal. In 1811 it staged 45 shows with 20 performers and 16 musicians. After the city became Ouro Preto in 1823 and entered economic decline, the building deteriorated; a planned replacement was dropped and a seven-year renovation was completed instead. IPHAN listed it in 1938.

The venue served as a gathering place where operas and oratorios brought people together during colonial times. Performances here shaped the cultural life of the mining region and showed how much music and theater mattered to society.

The theater sits along a street where you can see the full front, and climbing the internal stairs gives access to all levels. Plan to move slowly through narrow passages and wear comfortable shoes for exploring the different floors.

The sources do not mention any Guinness record; they call it the oldest theatre in the Americas, built from 1769 and opened on 6 June 1770, King José I's birthday. A 2006 renovation added an annex, modern lighting and acoustic improvements, and a 2022–2023 renovation costing 800,000 reais repaired the roof, painting, wiring and fire-fighting system.