Brasília's history is compressed into a single lifetime: surveyed in 1892, built in 1,000 days by 60,000 candangos, inaugurated 21 April 1960. Three days trace the pioneers' wooden shacks, the crypt of its founder and the archives of the Republic.
The foundation stone laid 7 September 1922 on Morro do Centenário, 45km from the Plano Piloto, marking the site the 1892 Cruls Mission surveyed for the future capital — 38 years before a single building rose. Open access, free.
Brasília's oldest surviving church, built 1880 in the town of Planaltina — founded 1859, a full century before the capital. Whitewashed colonial nave with wooden altars from the gold-route era, when this was a rest stop on the Estrada Real to Goiás.
Housed in an 1899 rammed-earth (taipa) house, the collection covers the Cruls Mission of 1892–1894 that mapped the 14,400 km² Quadrilátero Cruls, plus tools and documents from the Goiás gold cycle. Tue–Fri 09:00–17:00.
A syncretic religious community founded 1959 by clairvoyant truck driver Neiva Chaves Zelaya — one of the few settlements predating Brasília's inauguration. Thousands of robed mediums perform rituals around the Estrela Candente lake daily.
Niemeyer's 1981 mausoleum where President Juscelino Kubitschek lies in a granite crypt under a stained-glass dome by Marianne Peretti. Displays his 1960 Ford Galaxie, personal library of 3,000 volumes and the pen that signed the transfer law. Tue–Sun 09:00–18:00.
Niemeyer's 1986 dove-shaped monument on the Praça dos Três Poderes, holding the Livro dos Heróis da Pátria and João Câmara's seven-panel painting of the 1789 Inconfidência Mineira conspiracy and Tiradentes' execution. Tue–Sun 09:00–18:00.
The wooden shack built in ten days in October 1956 as JK's first presidential residence on the construction site — Brasília's first listed heritage building (tombado 1959). Original beds, the bathtub and the well are intact. Tue–Sun 09:00–17:00.
The 1957 wooden hospital that treated the candango labourers who built the capital, in Núcleo Bandeirante — the old Cidade Livre, the tax-free frontier town of bars and boarding houses that was meant to be demolished in 1960 and never was.
The DF's documentary memory: NOVACAP construction records, candango worker registration cards, and the photographic archive of Mário Fontenelle, JK's official photographer who shot the site daily from 1956. Mon–Fri 09:00–17:00, reading room by request.
Avenida Central still carries the wooden shopfronts of the 1956 settlement where 20,000 pioneers lived tax-free while the capital rose. Bars, a Sunday market and the original timber façades survive from Brasília's only unplanned town.
Niemeyer's white dome opened 2006 on the Esplanade, holding rotating exhibitions on the Republic's history alongside permanent documentation of the 1960 transfer and the 1964–1985 military years. Tue–Sun 09:00–18:30.
The 1960 marble head-monument by Bruno Giorgi's contemporary marks the exact origin point of Brasília's coordinate grid; the small subterranean Museu da Cidade holds the inaugural mass photographs from 3 May 1957 and JK's founding decree.