Where to Stay in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais

What is Ouro Preto known for?

Ouro Preto holds one of Brazil's best-preserved colonial centres, a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose churches, among them the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora do Pilar and the Carmine Church, set the standard for the style across Minas Gerais. Gold came first. The Museu da Inconfidência and the Casa dos Contos keep the record of the mining capital that governed Minas Gerais from 1720 until 1897.

What are the main landmarks in Ouro Preto?

Ouro Preto's landmark list runs mostly to churches. The Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, the Igreja de São Francisco de Paula, the Igreja de São José and the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary stand alongside the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Igreja do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos and the Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Mercês e Misericórdia. Museums answer them.

The Museu Aleijadinho, the Casa Guignard museum and the Museu do Oratório hold the art, while the Governors' Palace and the Ouro Preto Mining School carry the civic and technical side.

What is the history of Ouro Preto?

Ouro Preto began in 1711 as Vila Rica. Gold in the Serra do Espinhaço drew the settlement, and by 1720 the town was capital of Minas Gerais, a position it held until Belo Horizonte was founded in 1897 and the government moved out. The wealth went into churches.

Baroque work filled one parish after another, and the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora do Pilar, the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Carmine Church all survive from that century of building. Conspiracy left the deepest mark on local memory, and both the Museu da Inconfidência and the Museu Casa dos Inconfidentes take their names from it. Money had its own address.

Casa dos Contos carries the name of the counting house, and the Governors' Palace held the administration that ran the captaincy from these streets. After 1897 the capital was gone, and what stayed behind was the fabric itself, which is why UNESCO listed the whole town rather than any single monument within it. The Ouro Preto Mining School kept a working purpose alive, and the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto still holds the Museu de Ciência e Técnica da Escola de Minas and the Museu da Farmácia in the same colonial blocks.

Aleijadinho's name is on a museum. Santa Efigênia and Mercês de Baixo grew as parishes of their own around the Igreja Matriz de Santa Efigênia and the Church of Our Lady of Mercy and Forgiveness, and both still read as separate quarters of the listed town.

Where is Ouro Preto?

Mountains hem the town. Ouro Preto lies within the Serra do Espinhaço in central Minas Gerais, and the municipality spreads over more than a thousand square kilometres of high ground around a compact colonial core. Belo Horizonte sits beyond the ranges.

Slope governs the street plan, so the churches stand at different heights and the walk between the Igreja Matriz de Santa Efigênia and the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora do Pilar is a climb rather than a stroll.

What is the climate of Ouro Preto?

The Serra do Espinhaço sets the terms. Height in those mountains tempers the tropical band that Ouro Preto sits in, so the year divides into wet and dry instead of hot and cold, and the wet half is the harder one in a town built on slopes. Steep streets take rain badly.

The dry stretch is when the churches and museums of the colonial centre are easiest to reach on foot.

How do you get to Ouro Preto?

Belo Horizonte is the way in. The state capital, founded in 1897 to take the role this town had held, is the nearest large city, and the road up into the Serra do Espinhaço from it is how most visitors reach Ouro Preto. The last stretch climbs.

Inside the listed centre a car is more nuisance than help, since the colonial streets are narrow and steep while the churches, the Museu da Inconfidência and the Casa dos Contos all lie within walking distance of each other.