Minas Gerais, Brazil — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Minas Gerais known for?

Gold struck at the close of the 17th century pulled prospectors into these hills, and the wealth they dug out paid for the baroque churches of Ouro Preto, Tiradentes and Diamantina. Belo Horizonte is the capital. The sculptor Aleijadinho carved twelve soapstone prophets on the terrace at Congonhas, work that draws pilgrims and art historians alike.

Its kitchens matter too. Minas Gerais gave Brazil pão de queijo, feijão tropeiro and the sharp aged Canastra cheese.

Where is Minas Gerais?

Minas Gerais sits inland, in the Southeast Region of Brazil, and touches no sea. It is the country's fourth largest state by area. Seven neighbours ring it: São Paulo to the south and southwest, Mato Grosso do Sul to the west, Goiás and the Federal District to the northwest, Bahia across the north, Espírito Santo to the east, and Rio de Janeiro to the southeast.

That makes it a crossroads between the coast and the vast Brazilian interior. No coastline softens its edges. The land is high and broken.

The Serra do Espinhaço runs south to north through the state and splits its waters: rivers on the west side feed the São Francisco, which itself rises in the Serra da Canastra in the southwest, while those on the east, the Doce and the Jequitinhonha, run straight for the Atlantic. Belo Horizonte stands on the western slopes of that same range. The Serra da Mantiqueira walls off the southern border with São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and near the eastern edge Pico da Bandeira, the third highest mountain in Brazil, rises on the line with Espírito Santo.

Mountains define the state.

What is Minas Gerais like?

Gold built the culture, and the church spent it. Out of that came the Barroco Mineiro, a homegrown baroque of curved facades and soapstone saints that fills the old mining towns. Aleijadinho is its master.

Working with chisels strapped to his ruined hands, he cut the twelve prophets that stand before the sanctuary at Congonhas, and the painter Manoel da Costa Ataíde covered the ceilings inside with a distinctly Brazilian heaven. Their work still defines the region's image of itself. Music grew here too, from Baroque choirs to the Clube da Esquina sound out of Belo Horizonte.

Away from the churches, mineiro life is famously plain-spoken and unhurried. The table anchors it. Wood-fired stoves turn out feijão tropeiro, pork and couve, corn dishes and the soft cheese bread eaten across Brazil, washed down with cachaça distilled in the hills.

Artisan makers in the Serra da Canastra press a hard cheese whose recipe is protected national heritage. Portuguese is the language, spoken with the slow, clipped accent that other Brazilians pick out at once. Faith runs through it all, and Holy Week in Ouro Preto still fills the streets with flower carpets and candlelit processions.

What is the history of Minas Gerais?

Bandeirantes from São Paulo found gold in these streams at the end of the 17th century, and Portugal moved fast to control the strike. The Crown carved out the Captaincy of Minas Gerais in 1720 and made Vila Rica, later Ouro Preto, its seat. For a while the mines fed much of the world's gold.

Heavy taxes bred resentment. In 1789 a circle of local elites plotted independence in the Inconfidência Mineira; the plot failed, and its figurehead, Tiradentes, was hanged in 1792. The province became a state when Brazil turned republic, and in 1897 the government abandoned cramped Ouro Preto for a brand-new capital at Belo Horizonte.

What is the climate of Minas Gerais?

Two seasons run the year here, not four. From November to March the rains come, heavy afternoon storms that green the hills; from April to October the skies dry out and the dust settles in. Altitude does the rest.

Belo Horizonte sits high enough on the Serra do Espinhaço to stay mild when the lowlands bake, and the ridges around Diamantina turn genuinely cool at night. The northern valleys along the São Francisco run hot and near-arid. The dry months are the easy time to travel.

How do you get to Minas Gerais?

Almost everyone arrives through Belo Horizonte. Its main airport sits out at Confins, north of the city, officially Tancredo Neves International, and it is the state's busiest gateway, with an Atlantic link to Lisbon and connections through São Paulo and Brasília. From the capital, the historic towns are a drive: Ouro Preto lies about an hour and a half away by road, Diamantina considerably further north.

Trains barely serve the state. One exception survives, the Maria Fumaça steam line between Tiradentes and São João del-Rei.