My family’s most favored holiday destination has always been Petrópolis, the Imperial City. It was always in season — whether it was Carnaval or the Holy Week, or if it was winter or summer break, there was hardly ever a bad time to get in the car and take to the winding road that would lead us through the charming (or, alas, sometimes mined out) hills of Minas Gerais and across the Serra do Mar into this snug, verdant corner of Rio de Janeiro state.Needless to say, said snug and verdant corner lacks the renown of the world-famous beachside metropolis just a couple hours further down the road, but it is nonetheless a popular destination for locals. Visitors from large cities can enjoy trading a skyline of skyscrapers for the omnipresent green vista of the surrounding Serra dos Órgãos, cool weather, and a pleasantly walkable and — believe it or not — safe city center, paved with cobblestone and lined with old manors and delightful restaurants. The city’s crown jewel, however, is the Imperial Museum, which ought not to be skipped by any who visit Petrópolis.
The Imperial Museum, Petrópolis, Brazil. The reader should banish the thought of a museum as a drab gallery that houses out-of-place curios from some faraway place. The Imperial Museum has taken the place of Pedro II’s former summer palace, and it goes to great lengths to pretend that it is a palace still. Once you’re through the waiting line and given bespoke soft slippers to protect the old wooden floor, you’ll be treated to a guided tour of royal life. Between more busts and portraits of Pedro II than you could count, as well as notorious items such as his crown and a very famous golden pen, visitors can see cribs, bedrooms, the music and dining rooms, a small chapel for the family’s private use, even the bathroom, all furnished in such a fashion as to suggest that this is how it looked like when the Emperor still walked down those same hallways, as though it were still 1889.But, of course, it’s not 1889 anymore, and it is unlikely that Pedro II would recognize his summer palace today — I at least hope that he was not such an egomaniac that he loved nothing more than seeing his own face on the walls of his home. Nor is the museum as old as the Republic, having moved in when the monarchy vacated the palace. The marshals and oligarchs that replaced the Emperor had little interest in fostering monarchist nostalgia and made no such use of the building, which was refurbished for other ends. Getúlio Vargas, however, was much kinder to Brazil’s monarchical legacy. He created the Imperial Museum in 1940 and charged it with collecting artifacts to exhibit, focusing on Pedro II’s reign and, it seems, the royal family. This beautiful recreation of domestic royal life, then, may have been how Vargas, himself the autocratic head of the Estado Novo regime, wanted people to remember the Brazilian Empire. After all, that seems to be the most important concern for the country’s one and only Imperial Museum.Petrópolis itself has an obsession with the Empire like no other city in the country. The museum is located on Empress’ Street, not far from Princess Isabel’s house; nearby, you could walk down Emperor’s Street, and buy glasses at Imperial Ótica. A statue of Pedro II in military garb greets visitors to his former palace, and another sits reading a sculpted book in Pedro II Square. Throughout, apartment buildings are named after barons, counts and viscounts, and the mansions of the aristocrats that would follow the Emperor on his summer retreat still exist, each marked with a bespoke metal plaque for tourists to read. You may even be able to ride a horse-drawn carriage, like the noblemen presumably did. If any city can claim to bear the image of the Brazilian Empire, then, it must surely be the charming town to which the Emperor gave his name.
And yet, at the same time as the Emperor rested in Petrópolis under the shade of his lush garden, in Minas Gerais and São Paulo, enslaved men toiled under the sun in sprawling coffee plantations. In the capital, Pedro the Magnanimous’ government contrived exclusive ways to define voters and wrote broadly powerless anti-slavery laws, meant to enact change on very little besides the disfavorable temper of the British government — this being the origin of a current expression referring to token gestures, lei para inglês ver. Only in 1888, after decades of pressure by abolitionists, was slavery finally abolished, when Princess Isabel signed the Lei Áurea. Thus, in an ironic twist of fate, one of the most celebrated figures in the history of the abolition of slavery in Brazil was the royal heiress of a slave state. The very famous golden pen with which she signed the law is in the Imperial Museum. You can buy a replica at the gift shop.
Photo by Author
Though it is disempowered, there still exists a Brazilian royal family and Prince, with a monarchist movement to go with it. In a 1993 plebiscite held to determine the shape of the country’s government after the end of military rule, over 10% of voters picked a monarchy.
I cannot help but wonder how these people imagine the monarchy, and the time when Brazil had its own Emperor. Maybe they reckon that the word empire sounds nice and would have given them chauvinistic pride, regardless of what awful things it rightfully suggests to others. Maybe they are impressed by Westminster glamor, or by the nostalgic, old world elegance of the Imperial Museum. I’m sure that they bought monarchist flags at the gift shop to go with their golden pens.
Time is ever kinder to the privileged than it is to those who labored under their boots. The Emperor’s palace is sturdy, but the enslaved’s shack is brittle. Though the casa grande stands, the senzala has long collapsed. After a century, it is easy to see the first and forget the second.
One of the most memorable sights in the Imperial Museum to me lies outside the confines of the palace proper. Left from the main gate, close to the backdoor to the gift shop and with no ticket required, there’s a pavillion housing a well known painting — Pedro Américo’s A Batalha de Campo Grande.
It depicts what is considered to be one of the final military engagements of the brutal War of the Triple Alliance, or the Paraguay War. The Paraguayan despot Solano López had managed to evade capture by Brazilian and allied forces when they marched into Asunción, and orders were given to the Imperial army, at that point under the command of the Count of Eu, to chase and capture him.Américo shows a pale French nobleman in military uniform, sat astride a fierce white stallion, leading a charge. The darker skinned enemy soldiers are not attired with the same dignity; for the most part, they wear only rags, possibly a less than respectful depiction of the indigenous Guaraní people that are so prominent in Paraguay. In that country, this event is known as the Battle of Acosta Ñu, and its anniversary is marked by Paraguayan Children’s Day. I imagine that the reader is not blind to what this implies.I’m sure I was never told how Paraguay commemorates the anniversary of that battle in school. I have vague memories of how one teacher told me of the Paraguay War, this awful conflict where Brazilian troops laid waste to another nation, which was so devastated that it may have lost most of its adult men.He said that Britain was to blame.
