CCBB Belo Horizonte

The Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Belo Horizonte is a cultural centre rather than a museum with a fixed collection. It occupies a grand government building of the nineteen twenties on Praca da Liberdade, the ceremonial square of the capital of Minas Gerais, and it is one of four CCBB centres run by the bank's cultural foundation, alongside those in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Brasilia. What you will find inside depends on the calendar: large touring exhibitions of Brazilian and international art, a theatre season, a cinema programme, concerts and a busy education department. Entry to most of it is free, which is why the queues on a Sunday can stretch around the block.

The building was designed by the architect Luiz Signorelli and opened in nineteen thirty as the seat of a state secretariat. After decades as offices for the police and the state prosecutor it was restored between two thousand and nine and two thousand and thirteen, and the CCBB opened on the twenty seventh of August two thousand and thirteen. It is organised around a central courtyard now covered with a glass roof, with galleries on the upper floors, a theatre of about two hundred and sixty seats, a multipurpose room used for cinema and talks, a cafe and a shop.

The centre is part of the Circuito Liberdade, a ring of former ministries around the square that have all been turned into museums and cultural spaces, so plan to combine it with the square itself and its neighbours.