The Casa dos Bonecos Gigantes is the workshop and storage facility for Olinda's giant carnival puppets — the papier-mâché figures, some reaching three metres tall, that lead the famous Carnival processions through the historic streets. Visiting outside Carnival season gives you the chance to see the figures up close without the crowds, and often to watch the craftspeople at work constructing or repairing them.
The bonecos represent a rotating cast of politicians, local celebrities, and traditional folk characters. Some have been in use for decades and carry a history of their own; newer ones satirize whoever is currently in the news. The scale of the figures is remarkable — the internal steel armatures and the skill required to build something both large enough to be visible in a crowd and light enough to be danced through the streets — and the workshop context makes that craft legible in a way that seeing them in a procession does not.