Castro Maya's modernist hilltop house, kept as he left it — art collection included.
Landmark buildingThe Chácara do Céu is a flat-roofed modernist house on Rua Murtinho Nobre, built as the residence of industrialist and collector Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya and now a federal museum. The collection runs to roughly 22,000 pieces — Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, Picasso, Miró, rare books and the original furniture — displayed inside the rooms he actually lived in.
The gardens, designed by Roberto Burle Marx with native planting, wrap the hillside and connect directly to Parque das Ruínas next door. The site reads as a single landscaped block at the top of Santa Teresa, with open views over Guanabara Bay and Centro.
Address: Rua Murtinho Nobre 93, Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro
The property has carried the name Chácara do Céu since 1876. The family's old eclectic mansion was demolished in 1954, and Castro Maya commissioned architect Wladimir Alves de Souza to design the current house, completed in 1957 — clean horizontal lines and big openings set to frame the view rather than compete with it.
Castro Maya died in 1968 and left house, gardens and collection to the foundation that runs the museum today, paired with his other property, the Museu do Açude in the Tijuca forest.
We don't have an active listing in this building at the moment — browse everything we currently have across Rio.
Browse all properties →The shell of a salon-society mansion, rebuilt in glass and steel as a public viewpoint.
An 1850s coffee-farm mansion working today as one of Brazil's best-rated hotels.
Copacabana's most storied address, beside the Copacabana Palace
Where Tom Jobim composed the soundtrack of bossa nova
Want to see what's on the market near Museu da Chácara do Céu? Browse current listings across the city.
Browse all properties →