Qualla: Lauro Sodré Palace

Lauro Sodré Palace: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JLPizzol, CC BY-SA 4.0. On January 6, 1835, rebels led by Antônio Vinagre took the government palace in Belém. They did not raid it and leave. They held it, and the province with it, for two years, withdrawing into the interior of Pará in 1837 only to keep fighting from there. The building they occupied had been designed by a Bolognese architect for Portuguese governors and had been standing barely sixty years. It is standing still. The Palácio Lauro Sodré now houses the Pará State Museum, and the rooms where an eighteenth-century colonial administration issued its orders hang paintings instead.

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Image: JLPizzol | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lauro Sodré Palace: A House That Would Not Stay Up

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felipe Augusto Fidanza, Public domain. There was a palace here before this one. In 1680 the Portuguese put up a Casa de Residência - a residence house - for governors coming to inspect the Captaincy of Pará. It aged badly. By 1754, in the Pombaline years, Friar Miguel de Bulhões, standing in for Governor Mendonça Furt...

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Image: Felipe Augusto Fidanza | Public domain

Lauro Sodré Palace: Three Lots and a Master Mason

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit José Joaquim Codina (18th century), Public domain. Work on the replacement began in 1768 under a master mason named Jerônimo da Silva. To get the footprint the design wanted, the government bought three adjoining lots. The building was finished in November 1771 and occupied the following year by João Pereira Caldas, the Portugues...

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Image: José Joaquim Codina (18th century) | Public domain

Lauro Sodré Palace: The Cabanagem

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Arouck, Public domain. The revolt that took this building in 1835 was not a palace coup. The Cabanagem drew on the people the province counted least: the poor of the Amazon, Indigenous and Black and mixed-race, many of them living in the riverside cabanas that gave the movement its name. Between 1835 a...

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Image: User:Arouck | Public domain

Lauro Sodré Palace: From Orders to Objects

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ExAstra, CC BY-SA 4.0. The palace stayed in government use long after the empire ended, which is why it is also called the Palácio do Governo. The Museu do Estado do Pará was created in 1981; in 1994, under Governor Jader Barbalho, the building was converted to house it, and the museum has been here si...

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Image: ExAstra | CC BY-SA 4.0