Blog Culture & sights

2026-04-115 min readThe DestinoSC editorial team

A ranked list of the 7 museums in Santa Catarina worth planning half a day around — with real opening hours, ticket prices and what each one is actually about.

1. Museu Nacional de Imigração e Colonização — Joinville

Housed in the 1870 Palácio dos Príncipes, this is the most serious museum in Santa Catarina on the subject that most defines the state — the mass European immigration of the 19th century. Two floors of primary-source material: original ship manifests from the 1851 arrival of the first German settlers, land grants signed by Emperor Pedro II, farming implements, household objects, a full recreated colonial-era kitchen. Entry R$10, open Tuesday to Sunday 9am to 5pm, allow two hours minimum. The curator's notes are in Portuguese and German but the object labels have decent English.

This ranks first because it treats a subject Santa Catarina's other museums treat sentimentally — as a serious historical story with power imbalances, land dispossession from indigenous communities, and the specific economic pressures that pushed 100,000 Germans across an ocean. Go on a Wednesday morning when the building is quiet and the light through the tall windows is good. Combine with lunch at the Mercado Municipal three blocks away and you’ve built a proper Joinville half-day.

2. Museu Anita Garibaldi — Laguna

In the perfectly preserved 18th-century colonial town of Laguna, the Museu Anita Garibaldi occupies the 1747 Casa dos Governadores and tells the story of Anita Garibaldi — born Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro in Laguna in 1821, married the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi at 18, fought in the Farroupilha Revolution and later the Italian Risorgimento, and died in 1849 while pregnant with their fifth child during the retreat from Rome. Entry R$8, open Tuesday to Sunday.

The building itself is half the museum — original wooden floors, the balcony where the 1839 declaration of the Juliana Republic was read, and the whitewashed rooms that housed the provisional government. The Anita Garibaldi exhibition covers three rooms and mixes documents with a slightly hagiographic biographical narrative that's worth taking with a grain of salt. Ranks second because Laguna is worth a day trip regardless and this is the anchor visit on any Laguna itinerary. Combine with a walk around the Praça República Juliana.

3. Museu do Homem do Sambaqui — Florianópolis

Inside the Colégio Catarinense in downtown Florianópolis, the Museu do Homem do Sambaqui is the state's most important archaeological museum — dedicated to the sambaqui shell-mound builders who lived on the southern Brazilian coast from 8,000 to 1,000 years ago. Sambaquis are shell middens up to 30 metres tall and Santa Catarina has hundreds of them; this museum holds the objects excavated from a dozen sites. Human remains, tools, ornaments made from shell and stone, and a partial reconstruction of a sambaqui in cross-section.

Entry R$10, open weekdays only, allow 90 minutes. This ranks third because the sambaquis are Santa Catarina's deepest history and no other museum in the state addresses them seriously. The exhibition is small — three rooms — but properly curated. The catch is the limited hours (closed weekends, open only 8am to 5pm) which don’t suit tourist schedules. Go on a Monday morning before you drive out to the beaches — this is the context for everything you’re about to see.

4. Museu Histórico de Santa Catarina — Palácio Cruz e Sousa, Florianópolis

The pink-painted 1780s Palácio Cruz e Sousa on Praça XV in downtown Florianópolis was the seat of colonial government and then the state government until 1954. It's now the state history museum, and while the exhibits are conventional — furniture, portraits, uniforms — the building itself is the reason to visit. The original marble staircase, the ballroom with its restored 19th-century murals, the wrought-iron balconies over the square. Entry R$6, closed Monday, allow 90 minutes.

This ranks fourth because it's the most convenient museum in the state — right on the main square of downtown Florianópolis, five minutes from any hotel in the centre — and it delivers a solid overview of the state's colonial and imperial history in one visit. The English translations are patchy but the objects speak. Combine with a walk across the square to the Catedral Metropolitana and coffee at the Casa da Alfândega, which is a 19th-century customs house now home to an artisan market.

5. Museu Nacional do Mar — São Francisco do Sul

In the oldest city in Santa Catarina (founded 1504), the Museu Nacional do Mar occupies a converted warehouse on the waterfront and houses one of the most important collections of Brazilian wooden boats anywhere in the country. Fifty-plus vessels including full-sized fishing boats, canoes carved from single logs, and the Cruzeiro do Sul — a 1918 boat used in the north-eastern coastal trade. Entry R$10, open Tuesday to Sunday, allow two hours.

This ranks fifth because it's a specialist museum but the specialism is real — you’re looking at the actual maritime material culture of colonial and 20th-century Brazil, and the exhibition design gives the boats space to breathe. São Francisco do Sul is a 2h30m drive from Florianópolis and doesn’t justify itself for the museum alone, but combined with a walk around the colonial-era old town and lunch at Ancoramar it makes a proper day trip. Skip if you have no interest in boats; the building itself won’t hold you otherwise.

6. Museu da Fundação Cultural de Blumenau — Villa Petry

The Fundação Cultural de Blumenau operates several museum properties and the Villa Petry — a 1922 half-timbered manor house on Rua XV de Novembro — is the pick. It's set up as a period house museum showing bourgeois German-Brazilian domestic life in the 1920s, with original furniture, ceramics from Bavaria, family portraits, and a preserved kitchen with wood-fired stove. Entry R$8, open Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 5pm.

This ranks sixth because it's the most specific portrait of what German immigration to Santa Catarina actually looked like at ground level — one family, one house, one social class. It complements the Joinville national museum by going small and personal where the national one goes wide. Combine with the Museu da Cerveja two blocks away if you want a full Blumenau museum morning, but honestly the Cerveja museum is a marketing exercise and the Petry is the real deal. Allow 90 minutes.

7. Museu Casa Ativa — Treze Tílias

Treze Tílias in the western highlands was founded in 1933 by Austrian Tyrolean immigrants and remains a genuinely bicultural town where you can hear Tyrolean German spoken in the shops. Museu Casa Ativa is a small ethnographic museum in a Tyrolean-style wooden building near the main square, and it documents the specific Austrian settlement — different in character from the earlier German waves — with original tools, textiles and photographs. Entry R$6, open Tuesday to Sunday.

This ranks seventh because it's the smallest museum on the list but represents a settlement story you can’t get anywhere else in Brazil. Treze Tílias is a five-hour drive from Florianópolis and the trip only makes sense as part of a broader western-highlands itinerary — combined with the Villaggio Grando winery, Coxilha Rica or a Urubici circuit. As a museum alone it wouldn’t earn the drive; as part of a wider trip it's a proper punctuation mark on the region's immigration history.

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