The coffee museum occupies a historic building from the late 19th century, when Ribeirão Preto was the heart of Brazil's coffee empire. The region was known as the "Sea of Coffee" — an ocean of plantation stretching to the horizon in every direction — and the city grew fat on the export revenues. The museum explains the economics and social history of this period through maps, equipment, photographs, and documents.
Beyond the agricultural machinery and export statistics, the museum addresses the human dimension of the coffee economy honestly: the transition from enslaved labour to the mass immigration of Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and other workers who came to work the fazendas under the colonato system. Understanding this history explains a great deal about why São Paulo state looks and feels the way it does today. The exhibits are mostly in Portuguese, but the objects are self-explanatory enough to be worth a visit regardless.