Museu de Artes e Ofícios, Arts and Crafts Museum in central Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
The Museu de Artes e Ofícios occupies two restored railway station buildings and displays over 2,500 original tools and equipment from traditional Brazilian trades. The collection shows how people worked with mining, jewelry making, textiles, leather, food processing, and energy production across centuries.
The institution was established in 2005 to preserve tools and equipment documenting how Brazilians worked from the 18th century through the early 1900s. The collection focuses on hand-based trades that developed long before industrial machinery became common.
The museum displays how people in Minas Gerais worked with their hands across mining, jewelry, textiles, and leather crafts, showing what shaped the region's identity. These sections reveal how locals valued the skills and knowledge passed down through generations of artisans.
Visitors can come Thursday through Saturday, with opening hours varying between days and extending into the afternoon. The museum sits next to active railway tracks, making it convenient to arrive by train or public transport.
The museum shares space with an active train station, allowing trains to pass alongside exhibition galleries, creating an unexpected link between historical work and modern life. This unusual arrangement lets visitors see how traditional hand-based work and contemporary infrastructure coexist side by side.
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