Historical and Geographic Museum

The Museu Histórico e Geográfico de Campina Grande covers the city's rise from a colonial cattle-watering stop to its 19th-century boom as the cotton capital of Northeast Brazil. The collection includes photographs, documents, and objects from the cotton era and the period of rapid growth that followed. It is the best place in the city to understand how Campina Grande became the commercial and educational hub it is today.

The building itself, a restored 19th-century townhouse in the historic centre, is worth seeing. The museum is not large and can be covered in an hour. The staff are helpful and knowledgeable about the city's history.

things to do museum
A story
Campina Grande's rapid growth in the 19th century was built on cotton — the city became the largest cotton market in the world outside the United States in the 1850s, when the American Civil War disrupted supply chains and British mills turned to Brazil's northeast. The boom built the handsome commercial buildings of the old centre and funded the infrastructure that still underpins the city today.