The Parque Mariano Procopio values Brazilian flora and was considered by the Swiss naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807/1873), an expert in geology and paleontology, as "the paradise of the tropics."

After his sudden death at only 39 years of age in 1901, the property was sold to the Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil, which in turn transferred it to the Ministry of War, which built its regional military quarters on the plot.

[3] In that year, Princess Isabel and the Count of Eu were in Juiz de Fora and were able to pay a visit to the museum, having just returned from a recently repealed exile imposed on the royal family by the new republican government in 1889.

The museum counts itself as one of the principal exhibitions of the imperial period of Brazil - much of it originating from the Palácio São Cristóvão, the old residence of Dom Pedro II in Rio de Janeiro.

The collection of the Museum Mariano Procópio consists of about 50 000 objects of great historical, artistic and scientific value, including paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, rare books, documents, photographs, furniture, silver, armor, coins, postcards, clothing, porcelain, crystal and pieces of Natural History.

Sculptures and plaster casts, mostly made in the nineteenth century, by artists like Clodion, Marius Jean Mercié, Rodolfo Bernardelli, Modestino Kanto and Jose Otavio Correia Lima also appear throughout the Museum.