Minas Gerais: Brazil's Baroque Heart, and How to See It Well

Most first-time visitors plan Brazil around the coast and the Amazon, and never make it to the highlands where the country's story actually began. That's a shame, because Minas Gerais holds the finest colonial towns in Brazil, the single greatest work of its baroque, and, by common consent, its best food. Here is what makes it special, and how to see it without wearing yourself out.

Quick answer: Base yourself in colonial Ouro Preto and the capital Belo Horizonte. See Ouro Preto and nearby Mariana for the baroque churches and gold-mining history, Congonhas for Aleijadinho's twelve prophets, and, if you love art, Inhotim for a full day. Three to four days is ideal. Fly into Belo Horizonte's Confins airport; it combines beautifully with Rio de Janeiro, by a short flight or the historic Estrada Real drive. We'd skip Tiradentes on most trips (more below).

Where the story of Brazil began

In the 1690s, prospectors found gold in these cool, folded hills. The rush that followed funded Portugal's golden age and built a string of towns whose wealth went straight into churches, dozens of them, dripping with gold leaf and carved by local hands. When the gold ran out, the towns were simply left as they were. That is why Minas today feels like a preserved eighteenth century, and why Ouro Preto became, in 1980, the very first place in Brazil to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ouro Preto and Mariana

Ouro Preto is the one you picture: painted houses and thirteen baroque churches spilling down impossibly steep cobbled streets, still a living, lively university town rather than an open-air museum. Give it a full day on foot, the gilded interior of São Francisco de Assis, the hilltop viewpoints, the mineralogy and sacred-art museums, and the little workshops carving soapstone and setting gemstones.

Half an hour away, Mariana is the oldest town in the state and its first capital: a quieter, gentler square of baroque churches, one with a rare German pipe organ still played in concert. Nearby you can ride a mine cart down into a colonial gold mine and feel, for a moment, what all of this was built on.

Congonhas: the high point of Brazilian baroque

If you see one thing in Minas, see the twelve prophets at Congonhas. On the terrace of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos stand twelve life-size figures carved in soapstone by Aleijadinho, Antônio Francisco Lisboa, the mixed-race son of a Portuguese architect who, losing the use of his hands to illness, is said to have worked with tools strapped to his wrists. Each prophet is caught mid-gesture, mid-argument. It is one of the great sculptural ensembles anywhere, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it sits conveniently on the road between Belo Horizonte and Ouro Preto.

Inhotim: art in a botanical garden

On the far side of Belo Horizonte, near Brumadinho, Inhotim is something else entirely, and world-class. Monumental contemporary-art installations sit in purpose-built pavilions across 250 hectares of botanical garden, some 5,000 plant species and one of the finest palm collections on earth. There are lakes and swimming pools; people come with a picnic and stay all day. Because it lies in the opposite direction from the baroque towns, treat it as its own day out of Belo Horizonte rather than trying to fold it into the Ouro Preto loop.

The other reason to come: the food

Ask Brazilians where the country eats best and a surprising number will say Minas. Comida Mineira, the state's slow country cooking, is a cuisine in its own right: pork and beans cooked for hours, farm cheeses (one traditional method is recognised as Brazilian cultural heritage), warm pão de queijo, doce de leite, all washed down with artisanal cachaça and what many consider Brazil's best coffee. A Mineiro lunch is not a meal, it's an afternoon. We build it into every day here.

The route we actually recommend

After planning a lot of these trips, our advice is to keep it tight and sleep in just two places: Ouro Preto and Belo Horizonte. Arrive into Belo Horizonte, see the Niemeyer architecture at Pampulha and the Mercado Central, then drive south, stopping at Congonhas for the prophets, and settle into Ouro Preto for two nights, with Mariana as a half-day. Add a night back in Belo Horizonte only if you want a full day at Inhotim. It's an easy add-on to Rio, either a short flight or the scenic Estrada Real drive.

Why we usually skip Tiradentes. It's a pretty town, and guidebooks love it, but it sits well south of the Ouro Preto–Belo Horizonte cluster. Adding it means extra nights and a long haul back to Confins airport, which pushes up the cost, and honestly it doesn't add much history you won't already have felt, more vividly, in Ouro Preto, Mariana and Congonhas. We'd rather give you rich days and short drives than a checklist. If you have real time and a love of colonial towns, we'll happily build it in, but we'll always tell you the trade-off first.

That's Minas Gerais: the baroque, the art, the food, and the story of where Brazil began. If you'd like it woven into your trip, tell us your dates and what you're hoping for and we'll build a private, tailor-made route, or read our full Minas Gerais destination guide and our guide to planning a trip to Brazil.