'The museum is alive' - Rio team toils to rescue items from devastating fire
Those who once worked in the National Museum in Brazilian city hope a new institution can emerge from the fire’s ashes
Since a devastating fire gutted Rio’s National Museum and consumed most of its collection of 20m items, archaeologist Murilo Bastos, 35, has lived an upside-down life.
He used to work in an office inside the colonial palace, once the home of the Portuguese royal family. Now he scours its charred interior for anything that survived the blaze.
“We were used to working in air conditioning, now we are on a building site,” he said, stamping dusty boots as he took a break outside its sealed-off perimeter on a recent morning. The museum’s outer walls are still standing but three of
