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Petropolis: Imperial Museum & Crystal Palace with Brewery Option

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/9

Duration12h

GroupUp to 100

LanguagesEN · PT +1

PickupAt your hotel

The Imperial Family's Summer Palace Is Now Yours to Walk Through

You visit the Imperial Museum's furniture, jewelry and clothing collections, walk through the Crystal Palace and Santos Dumont House, and optionally tour the Bohemia Brewery with a sample. Transport from your Rio hotel is included in an air-conditioned vehicle, and you return by evening without arranging any logistics yourself.

12h

Step-by-step itinerary

Visit Quitandinha Palace
Tour Imperial Museum
See St. Peter Cathedral
View Crystal Palace
Pass by Santos Dumont House Museum

The Experience

Most Rio visitors never leave the beach. Petropolis sits two hours inland, where the Brazilian Imperial Family escaped the heat, and the whole city still feels like their private retreat. The Imperial Museum is the reason to go — you walk through rooms where emperors actually lived, past their jewelry, their paintings, their clothes hanging in cases like they might wear them tomorrow. It's the kind of place where history stops being a textbook and becomes furniture you can almost touch.

The day moves through the city's other landmarks in a logical order: the Crystal Palace downtown, which hosted celebrities and dignitaries for over a century; the neo-gothic St. Peter Cathedral; and the Santos Dumont House Museum, where Brazil's aviation pioneer lived in a house he designed himself. You travel in an air-conditioned bus with a maximum of 45 people, which means you're not crammed into a van but not alone either. The pickup happens from your Rio hotel — the driver contacts you to confirm the exact time based on where you're staying.

If you choose the full experience, the Bohemia Brewery tour comes at the end of the day. You see how one of Brazil's most important beers moves from grain selection through bottling, and if you're lucky, there's a sample waiting. It's optional, so you can skip it if the museum alone is enough, or add lunch in the city between stops. The whole thing takes roughly eight hours door to door, which sounds long until you realize you're not driving, navigating, buying tickets separately or figuring out where to eat.

What’s included

Entrance to the Imperial Museum.
air-conditioned vehicle transport from your Rio hotel.
visits to the Crystal Palace, St. Peter Cathedral, and Santos Dumont House Museum.
optional Bohemia Brewery tour with a sample.
optional lunch in Petropolis.

Good to know

Easy physical levelStroller friendlyPets welcomeInfants must sit on laps

Operated by Rio Carioca Tour Ltda

Is this one for you?Book this if you want Rio's most important historical sites in one day without renting a car or buying tickets at each stop — the fixed itinerary and included transport are what make a full inland trip possible without spending the morning on logistics.