A neighbor of Brazil in the South American continent, Uruguay, is as famous for its carnival traditions no less than sunny Rio-de-Janeiro! There is even a special Carnival Museum (Museo del Carnaval) in the capital of Uruguay. It has a collection of the main attributes of the grand festival and its history.

The Carnival Museum in Montevideo is not just called the gate to the atmosphere of Uruguay. Here you can capture the mood and the spirit of the country. The museum stands and collections hold items and traditions of the Uruguay multinational festival filled with colors, dances, music, fantastic clothes, and a firework of emotions. The Carnival in Uruguay is truly an event of a national scale: the huge festival includes events in the Montevideo area as well as in other regions of the country.

The Carnival Museum was opened in the capital not a long time ago, in 2008. It isn’t aimed as much at tourists as at young Uruguayans. The purpose of the collections is to preserve the understanding that the musical and dancing festival has a folklore origin; it is a special way to express emotions, based on ethnic traditions. The museum in Montevideo was the first of that kind in all Latin America.

The stands and museum halls display costumes and masks of different periods, musical instruments, selections of visuals  materials (photos, documents, movies, paintings) illustrating the history of the festival and the stages of its development.

The Museum in Montevideo will reveal a lot of new and extraordinary facts to those of you who are familiar with the Brazilian celebration of dances, music and cheer, and those who’ve had a chance to see carnivals only of more moderate formats in smaller European cities. Here everything is organized in a distinct manner in comparison to what we are used to seeing during the broadcasts and in the pictures from Brazilian Sambadrome. The costumes in the Uruguayan style differ from Brazilian ones. They use a great deal of folkloristic patterns, ornaments, and decorative elements. The conceptual background of the Uruguayan carnivals is Indian folklore, and the most popular in the country genres of songs and dances are the musical one.

Even though the bright festival in Montevideo is not so famous beyond the borders of the South American continent as the Brazilian, the amount of amusements, surprises, and emotions it gives to the locals and the guests is not smaller. If a guest doesn’t have a costume, there is an opportunity to rent it. And if your trip isn’t planned for the festival season, it won’t be the reason for you not to enjoy the holiday. In this case, the Carnival Museum will help you to pour yourself into the enchanting atmosphere. It is open all year round.