In a tragic turn of events, Brazil’s National Museum which is a 200 year old building and housed 20 million artifacts went up in flames on Sunday night.

The fire started on Sunday evening, after the building, a 19th century former royal palace, had closed for the day.

The fire lit up the night sky, and sent plumes of smoke over the city of Rio de Janeiro.

One of the largest anthropology and natural history collections in the Americas was almost totally destroyed by the blaze.

The museum hosted thousands of items related to the history of Brazil, as well as artifacts from Egypt, Greco-Roman art and some of the first fossils found in Brazil.

National Museum officials said that almost 90% of the collection was destroyed by the fire but no injuries were reported.

Aerial photos the next morning revealed the scale of damage to the historic building. It is unknown what caused the fire but officials have blamed lack of funding for the devastation. The destruction of the museum has been described as a “cultural tragedy”.

Demonstraters later gathered outside the museum to voice their anger at the authorities.

Disclaimer:We do not allow users to post content which is copyright and We take strict actions against the users who post infringement content on our website.Although we do not host any content, users post embed videos from youtube, facebook, Dailymotion and Vimeo and are moderated before posting but we still take strict action against the copyright videos posted.If you are an official representative of any company whose videos are posted illegally on our website or you think some video infringe the copyright then you can simply send an email to info@thesuccess.pk