The National Museum of Brazil (Museu Nacional), located in the Quinta da Boa Vista park neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, is a century-old museum and 
research center. It housed one of the largest exhibitions in the Americas, including a collection of animals, insects, precious minerals, a vast collection of indigenous tools, Egyptian mummies, meteorites, fossils, local South American archaeological artifacts, as well as countless other important discoveries.
History
The National Museum was created 200 years ago, in 1818, by Dom João VI, king of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. The then regent prince and the Portuguese royal family had moved to Brazil in 1808 to escape the invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The building that housed the museum was the Paço de São Cristóvão. Built in the early 19th century, it became the residence of Dom João VI and later 
of his son Dom Pedro I, who was crowned the first emperor of independent Brazil in 1822. After independence, the museum was renamed the Royal and National Museum. The palace continued to be the residence of Dom Pedro II and the imperial family throughout the 19th century.
The National Museum was established by a royal initiative to promote scientific research in Brazil, which until then was a vast colony relatively unexplored by scientific disciplines, making the National Museum the oldest scientific institution in the country and the largest museum of natural history and 
anthropology in all of Latin America. As it initially housed mainly specimens of plants and animals with many different types of birds, the old building where the National Museum was located in Rio Centro was widely referred to as the “House of Birds.”
The National Museum also housed one of the largest libraries for scientific research in Rio de Janeiro and offered a variety of postgraduate courses in disciplines ranging from anthropology, sociology, botany, geology, zoology, and paleontology.
What Was Lost
Almost 90 percent of the 20 million items housed in the National Museum of Brazil were destroyed by the fire.
The collections of the National Museum featured rare artifacts from around the world. Its Egyptian collection, consisting of 700 artifacts, became the largest in Latin America. It also had a rich collection of Brazilian indigenous artifacts.
The museum also housed items belonging to the Brazilian royal family, left behind in 1889 when a republican military coup ended the monarchy in the country and exiled the family to France. The rich royal collection included the sarcophagus of Sha-Amun-em-su (mummified about 2,708 years ago), which was brought by Emperor Dom Pedro II to Brazil on his third trip to Egypt in 
1876.
What Was Recovered
Brazilian authorities said they recovered pieces of a 12,000-year-old fossil of a Neolithic woman that was among the precious artifacts of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro.
The fossil, nicknamed “Luzia,” was discovered in 1970 in the state of Minas Gerais, in the southeast of the country, by an expedition led by French researchers.
A team from the University of Manchester later created a digital facial reconstruction based on the skull, which was used to model a sculpture of the ancient woman.
The Bendegó meteorite from the museum’s meteorite collection, which is the largest iron meteorite ever found in Brazil, emerged unscathed. According to the National Geographic Society, being a “large metallic rock” is what saved it 
from damage, as these qualities make it fire-resistant.
Firefighters also recovered several portraits from the upper floor of the museum, which had been burned, damaged by smoke and water, but not destroyed.
A portion of the museum’s collection, specifically the herbarium and species of fish and reptiles, was housed at another location and was not affected. There was also a large scientific library within the museum, containing thousands of rare works, which was undamaged.
Salvage Efforts
There is a plan, which is expected to cost R$ 10 million, offered by the Brazilian Government as an emergency budget, to rebuild the ruins of the building. UNESCO says that the reconstruction would take 10 years to complete. The museum is still alive, promoting some festivals called Museu Nacional Vive or Museu Vive for the public in tents set up in front of the construction improvements at the burned headquarters, featuring exhibits of fossils, live snakes, and stuffed animals like pterosaurs and armadillos, among others. The museum would create a permanent outdoor exhibition. Some experts say that R$ 100 million would be needed to rebuild the main facilities.
The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Federal Police.