Children in blue uniforms sit on the grass with clipboards under huge palm trees. With the guidance of a teacher, they design the setting: a tropical garden in a palace, with lakes, a fountain and a huge bandstand.
Elderly people walk and couples walk hand in hand in the park. A few meters away, other designs intrigue an archaeologist, a museologist and an architect: hydraulic tiles over 150 years old, hand-painted in England by the most noble Victorian flooring manufacturer, emerging from a hole dug for the passage of sewer pipes.
There is no record of these tiles on any plan of that palace, even though it was once the center of power in Brazil, as the seat of the Presidency of the Republic and the official residence of presidents for more than half a century.
“There’s a lot of history in this place,” said museologist Isabel Portella, figuratively. “One period supplants another, and, in addition to having the history that happened in here, there is also a lot of history below. Layers of history at the top, and other historical layers at the bottom”.
JK’s dream
Isabel works at the Museu da República, created in the Palácio do Catete after the capital of Brazil was transferred from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília in 1960. While planning the move, it was in this palace that former president Juscelino Kubitschek (JK) dreamed of the capital of the future.
Before that, Getúlio Vargas lived and governed the country from the palace during his government and also ended his life there, when he committed suicide on August 24, 1954, aged 72. It was also from this palace that Venceslau Brás declared war on Germany in 1917, at the end of World War I, after the Imperial German Navy sank Brazilian merchant ships.
In the face of so much documented history, no record gives any clue as to the origin of the hydraulic tiles found the day before the 2023 carnival, on February 16th. Isabel Portella is an expert on the subject, having mapped all 47 tile patterns that exist in the Catete Palace. It can guarantee that the find is of the same quality as the floors used in the hall entrance and other areas of the museum, imported from England at the time of construction, between 1858 and 1867.
Head of the architecture nucleus and deputy director of the Museum of the Republic, Ana Cecilia Lima Santana said that the presence of archaeological discoveries in the basement of the Museum of the Republic is actually not so surprising. But something the size of what was found this time left all the specialists in the house without answers.
Excavations
“We know that, in the gardens of the palace, we can find anything in the excavations. That’s why you always have to have an archaeologist with you in any interference that is made, for even the slightest passage of pipes. It’s a historic garden that has passed by many modifications. We just didn’t imagine that we would find something of this size”, he said.
“We don’t have any reports of what that might have been. The oldest plans don’t show anything built here. The oldest documents don’t show anything in that area,” he added.
The excavations made in the garden for the passage of the new sewer pipes had already come across pieces of crockery, glass and ceramics, but all of them were tiny, said archaeologist Beth Modesti Simões, who was the one who found the tile digging with a pickaxe.
“I realized I had something and I said, hold on, let’s take it slow,” she recalled. “When I found this tile, I noticed the quality. It has the manufacturer’s initials, so we have no doubt that it is Minton. This manufacturer was very renowned, he did a restoration on Westminster Cathedral [no Reino Unido]’ Beth said.
The cathedral in question is famous for the weddings, coronations and funerals of the British royal family. Beth is now working on confirming what was found, digging further to find out the real size of the tiled area, as only a little more than a meter has already been revealed. After the whole area has been opened, the answer will still be missing as to which structure had received such a noble tile in the middle of the garden.
“It is a work of historical archeology, in which you cross the artifacts that you found, the material culture of that time, with the documents that you discover in archives and plans”, detailed she, who works at the Institute of Archeology of Brazil, accompanied by National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan).
The three researchers have their own speculations. They range from tests carried out to show the patterns to the former owner of the mansion to the possibility of a portico, with an alternative entrance to the garden, which has already been expanded several times. There are even unclear reports that there may have been a house built there for the mother-in-law of the Baron of Nova Friburgo, who was responsible for building that luxurious palace with a garden that ended in the sand of the beach.
slave nobility
But how was a mansion so sumptuous to the point of being a presidential palace built to be the residence of a noble family in the 19th century? Between English hydraulic tiles, German stained glass and marble columns, the luxury and refinement of the residence exemplify the economic power of the coffee and slaveholding elite, of which the Baron of Nova Friburgo, Antônio Clemente Pinto, was a prominent representative.
Baron and Baroness of Nova Friburgo next to a model of the Catete Palace, in a portrait in oil on canvas by Emil Bausch (1867) – File
“He built most of his fortune from the trafficking of enslaved people”, defined archaeologist Beth Modesti. “It was an activity that generated an enormous fortune for all of them”.
A study published in the Maracanan Magazine, of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, by the historian Rodrigo Marins Marretto, accounts that, in just four years, from 1827 to 1830, the Baron of Nova Friburgo was responsible for the forced arrival of more than 3, 3 thousand people enslaved from Africa to Brazil, in eight trips.
The main ports in which the baron bought enslaved people were Quilimane, Cabinda, Luanda and Inhambane, and the landings were always carried out in Rio de Janeiro.
In all, 306 people died on the journey across the Atlantic Ocean, and the rest were sold or made up the huge contingent of enslaved people, which turned him into one of the largest coffee growers in the interior of Rio, guaranteeing a title of nobility to a man who only a few years ago he used to work in commerce.
“It was the slave trade that allowed a first cycle of enrichment that, through the accumulated capital, overflowed to the agricultural areas of the province of Rio de Janeiro and contributed to the setting up of a complex and varied agrarian system”, explained an article published by the historian.
Under his ownership, the baron accumulated 2,180 enslaved people and 15 farms. His wealth and influence made him look for a prominent place to live in the capital, closer to the headquarters of the Brazilian Empire, whose political support was inseparable from the slaveholding elite.
It was then that construction began on the Catete Palace, where the Baron and Baroness lived for a short time. The imposing three-story neoclassical building was completed in 1867, and the baron died in 1869. His wife, the baroness, in 1870. The palace remained in the family until 1889, when it was sold by one of the couple’s sons, the count of São Clement.
In the following seven years, it changed hands until it reached Banco da República do Brasil, in 1895, and was requested to be the seat of the Presidency of the Republic the following year.
The Palácio do Catete was the seat of the Executive Power until 1960, when the federal capital was transferred to Brasília. Today, it is open to visitors, as the Museum of the Republic, and its 12,000-square-meter garden is a leisure area that functions as a square for the residents of Catete, a neighborhood characterized by narrow streets and old buildings.
