Museu Chácara do Céu

Frommer's Review

A wealthy man with eclectic tastes, Raymundo Castro Maya had this mansion built in the hills of Santa Teresa, then filled it with all manner of paintings, pottery, and sculpture. The house itself is a charmer, a stylish melding of hillside and structure that evokes Frank Lloyd Wright's work in the American West. The views from the garden are fabulous. Inside, you get a glimpse into the eccentric mind of the collector. Castro Mayo seems to have had three chief interests -- European painters (Impressionists like Monet and Matisse, and more daring stuff like Picasso and Dalí); Brazilian art, particularly 19th-century landscapes; and Chinese pottery. He also seems to have felt some kinship between the three. Thus on an upper floor landing do we find a cubist painting by Dutchman Kees Van Dongen next to an 18th-century Brazilian landscape, both of them hung over an antique Chinese vase. See what you think.

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