Photos

One of the rooms in the Museo Regional Braun Menéndez.

Museo Regional Braun Menéndez and Palacio Sara Braun are testaments to the staggering wealth produced by the region's vast 19th-century sheep and cattle estancias. The museums are the former residences of several members of the families Braun, Nogueira, and Menéndez, who believed that any far-flung, isolated place could be tolerated if one were to "live splendidly and remain in constant contact with the outside world." And live splendidly they did.

The Palacio Sara Braun is now partially occupied by the Hotel José Nogueira and the Club de la Unión, a meeting area for the city's commercial and political leaders. Sara Braun, who emigrated from Baltic Russia with her brother Mauricio Braun, was the widow of the shipping, wool and cattle magnet José Nogueira. The Museo Regional Braun Menéndez is the former residence of Mauricio Braun and Josefina Menéndez, a marriage that united the two largest fortunes in the Magellanic region. With the falling price of wool and the nationalization of estancias during the early 1970s, the families lost a large percentage of their holdings, and their descendants have relocated.

The homes are national monuments, and both have been preserved in their original state, which allows visitors to appreciate the finest European craftsmanship available at the end of the 19th century. French architects planned the neoclassical exteriors, and craftsmen were brought from Europe to sculpt marble fireplaces and hand-paint walls to resemble marble and leather. The interior fixtures and furniture were also imported from Europe, including gold and crystal chandeliers, tapestries from Belgium, Arabian tables inset with abalone, stained-glass cupolas, English and French furniture, hand-carved desks and more.