Portal:Brazil/Featured article/March 2007

The Museum of the Portuguese Language (Portuguese: Museu da Língua Portuguesa) is an interactive museum about the Portuguese language in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The museum is contained within the Estação da Luz train station, in the Luz district. It was conceived by the São Paulo Secretary of Culture in conjunction with the Roberto Marinho Foundation, at a cost of around 37 million reais (14.5 million euros).

The objective of the museum is to create a living representation of the Portuguese language, where visitors may be surprised and educated by unusual and unfamiliar aspects of their own native language. Secondly, the caretakers of the museum, as expressed on the museum website "desire that, in this museum, the public has access to new knowledge and reflection, in an intense and pleasurable manner". The museum targets the whole Brazilian population, made up of people from many regions and social backgrounds, but who still have not had the opportunity to gain a broader understanding of the origins, the history and the continuous evolution of the language.

The museum itself features innovative and predominantly virtual exhibits which feature a mixture of art, technology and interactivity, while keeping in mind the historical building the museum is housed in. It consists of diverse exhibitions with hands-on activities, videos, sounds and images all about the Portuguese language.

The museum occupies three floors of the Estação da Luz and is 4,333 m² in area. The entryway to the museum contains the "Tree of the Language", a three-story high sculpture, created by Brazilian architect Rafic Farah. The leaves are outlines of objects and the roots are formed by words that gave rise to those words in Portuguese. The tree can be seen through transparent walls when using the elevator.

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