The Main Staircase
Luiz Signorelli (architect) · 1926 to 1930
Pass through the arched door and the entrance hall opens onto a broad marble stair that climbs to a landing and then splits into two curving flights. Iron balustrades with scrolled panels follow the curve, a red carpet runs up the centre, and at the foot of the stair two bronze lamp standards hold clusters of glass lanterns. Above the landing, three tall windows of coloured glass throw yellow and blue light onto the steps. This is the ceremonial heart of the old secretariat, the route by which petitioners and officials climbed to the offices of power, and the restoration has kept it exactly as it was.
The staircase is a good place to see how the building's makers thought. The stone is Brazilian marble, polished to a soft sheen, and the ironwork was made locally at a time when Belo Horizonte was barely thirty years old and eager to show that it could match Rio de Janeiro. Look at the lamps: their square glass heads are already touching on the geometry of Art Deco, while the balustrade is still in the curling taste of the nineteenth century. That mixture is what architects mean when they call the building eclectic.
During the restoration the marble was cleaned, the ironwork was stripped and repainted, and the glass was repaired pane by pane. The stair is not just for show; it is still the main way up to the galleries, and on busy days it fills with visitors waiting for their timed entry. Come down it slowly on your way out and look up at the windows against the light.
Did You Know? The lamps and balustrade were made when Belo Horizonte, a planned capital founded in eighteen ninety seven, was barely thirty years old.
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