Sao Miguel das Missoes

Sao Miguel das Missoes is a municipality in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The municipality is home to important 17th-century Spanish Jesuit mission ruins. San Miguel Mission is located in the Riograndense Northwest Mesoregion and the Santo Angelo Microregion. The community was built up on Mission San Miguel Arcángel, a Spanish colonial Jesuit Reduction founded in 1632. It was renamed Mission Sao Miguel das Missoes after becoming part of Brazil. In 1984, UNESCO designated Mission So Miguel das Misses as one of four Jesuit reduction sites in Argentina and one in Brazil as Jesuit Missions of the Guaranis World Heritage Sites.

The Mission Museum (Museu das Misses) in So Miguel Mission is a historical museum. The museum was one of the initial projects of the Office of Historical and Artistic Heritage, which is now known as IPHAN. The SPHAN was founded in 1937, and the same year, the architect Lucio Costa was dispatched to the Rio Grande do Sul to assess the ruins of the Seven Peoples of the Missions and provide recommendations. One of his ideas was to build a museum to house the missionaries' monuments that were scattered across the region. The vestiges of the village of San Miguel, as well as the museum structure, were designated as National Heritage in 1938, and the Museum of the Missions was formed in 1940.

Between 1938 and 1940, the architect Lucas Mayerhofer was in charge of stabilizing the mission Church of San Miguel, as well as the creation of the museum building and the collection of statues. Religious pictures from the time of the Jesuit missions' installation in the region are currently listed in the museum's collection.

Location: the Rio Grande do Sul state, southern Brazil