Museu Casa Kubitschek, Presidential residence museum at Pampulha Lake, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Museu Casa Kubitschek is a modernist residence on the shores of Pampulha Lake, designed with a distinctive butterfly-shaped roof and landscaped gardens. The house preserves furniture, personal objects, and interior details that show how a prominent political family lived during the mid-20th century.
Oscar Niemeyer designed the house, built between 1940 and 1943 as the weekend residence of Juscelino Kubitschek, then prefect of Belo Horizonte. The Kubitschek family occupied it until 1945, when he moved to Rio de Janeiro as a federal deputy. In 1956 his friend Joubert Guerra bought the property; his widow Juracy lived there until 2004, and the city converted it into a museum inaugurated on 10 September 2013.
The interior holds panels by Alfredo Volpi and murals by Paulo Werneck, made with Oscar Niemeyer's team. The social wing grouped living, dining and games rooms; the private wing had three bedrooms. A door linked the master bedroom to the pool area, which Kubitschek's opponents called an "emergency exit" for alleged affairs.
The museum occupies a 2,800 m² plot on the Pampulha Lake shore, with the house set back from the street behind Roberto Burle Marx's entrance garden. Visits are free of charge since the September 2013 opening. The site belongs to the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, alongside the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Pampulha Museum of Art and Casa do Baile.
A smaller house with three bedrooms, two living rooms and a bathroom stands behind the main house by the pool; Kubitschek used it as an office and often worked and took phone calls while sunbathing there.
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