Qualla: Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana

Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo630, CC BY-SA 4.0. Apartment 217 was nothing special by the time Mário Quintana moved in. The Hotel Majestic had cut its rooms from three hundred down to one hundred, the grand staircases of its heyday had grown shabby, and the building had begun renting beds by the month to people who simply needed somewhere to live. One of them was the most beloved poet in Rio Grande do Sul. From 1968 to 1980, Quintana wrote in that faded room above the Araújo Ribeiro Passage, and when the state finally rescued the crumbling hotel, it did not name the new cultural center for the presidents who had slept there. It named it for the man in 217.

Image: Ricardo630 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana: An Engineering Dare

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-shared) Ricardo Rmx, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the German-Brazilian architect Theodor Wiederspahn designed the Majestic, he was attempting something Brazil had never seen. The hotel was the first large building in Porto Alegre to use reinforced concrete, and Wiederspahn pushed the new material to a bold conclusion: two b...

Image: (WT-shared) Ricardo Rmx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana: The Guest List

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys), CC BY-SA 3.0. For two decades the Majestic was the address where the powerful and the famous stayed when they came to the gaúcho capital. Future presidents Getúlio Vargas and João Goulart passed through its doors. So did singers like Vicente Celestino and Francisco Alves, voices that defined a...

Image: Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana: Saved From the Wrecking Ball

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tetraktys, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rescue came through a careful bit of public maneuvering. In July 1980 the state bank Banrisul bought the failing hotel so that the government of Rio Grande do Sul could acquire it more cheaply, sealing the purchase on December 29, 1982. From 1983 the city pressed forward with a c...

Image: Tetraktys | CC BY-SA 3.0

Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana: A Garden on the Roof

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys), CC BY-SA 3.0. Today the building holds more than most visitors can absorb in a day: the Lucília Minssen and Érico Veríssimo libraries, theaters, three cinemas, galleries, and part of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Rio Grande do Sul, whose collection of 2,229 works leans toward the contempo...

Image: Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana: The Poet of Simple Things

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys), CC BY-SA 3.0. The man whose name the building carries was, fittingly, someone who made his home in hotels. Mário Quintana was born in Alegrete in 1906 and came to Porto Alegre as a teenager in 1919 to study at the Military School. He earned his living as a journalist and translator, rendering ...

Image: Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys) | CC BY-SA 3.0