The Museu Histórico Abílio Barreto sits in the Cidade Jardim neighbourhood and tells the story of Belo Horizonte itself — how the new state capital was planned, surveyed, and built in the 1890s on top of the old village of Curral del Rei. The collection includes the original city plans, photographs of the construction, and a series of objects from the older village that the new city replaced.
The museum building is itself part of the story — a nineteenth-century rural homestead that was one of the few buildings of Curral del Rei spared during construction. It is small but well presented, with English-language information available for most exhibits.