Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB)

This guide to the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro traces the neoclassical hall architect Francisco Joaquim Bethencourt da Silva raised in the 1800s, first as home to the Commercial Association and its bond exchange, then as a working Banco do Brasil branch into 1960. It follows the building's turn toward art on October 12, 1989, when the bank handed the space over to painters, sculptors and performers, and the marble staircase that once carried clerks with ledgers. Stand under the restored rotunda and look up at the glasswork above you.