See the full gallery on Posterous

The Museum of the Portuguese Language in Sao Paulo is quite the unique experience. It’s a museum, the only one of its kind in the world it claims which is dedicated to just one language and its history.

Through the interactive exhibits and the cinematic show which ends up with you walking ‘through’ the screen into another room of projection displays.

Another gallery has a wall of continuous video displays more than a hundred metres long, showcasing different aspects of the words relating to Brazilian culture – football, carnival, food, music, history…

I was lucky with my timing at this museum as there was also a temporary exhibit dedicated to my favourite poet, Fernando Pessoa. His poems once translated into English are still fantastic, but in Portuguese they are truly incredible.

He was quite the philosopher who wrote under a number of heteronyms, or assumed characters, which allowed him to explore life from a number of different perspectives and different voices.

Try a few of his poems out for yourself and see if you like them… Personally I think he is among the world’s finest poets.

http://www.meaningsoflife.com/Poems/Poems-Pessoa.htm

http://fernandopessoa.multiply.com/reviews/item/6

His collection of short observations about life can be found in English as ‘The Book of Disquiet’. It’s my favourite book.