The diamond city of Minas Gerais — 18th-century colonial streets, the birthplace of Lula and Juscelino Kubitschek, and the finest queijo minas in Brazil
Diamantina is a colonial city in the Espinhaço mountain range of northern Minas Gerais — 290km north of Belo Horizonte, at 1,200m, with an 18th-century diamond-mining heritage that made it briefly the diamond capital of the world (from the 1720s until the South African diamond fields eclipsed it in the 1870s). The old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a complete colonial urban ensemble of 18th-century white-plastered houses with coloured wooden window frames, cobblestone streets, Baroque churches (especially the Cathedral of Santo Antônio, 1750), and the Casa da Chica da Silva — the manor…
Diamonds were discovered in the Rio Jequitinhonha valley near the present-day Diamantina in 1728 — the first major diamond discovery outside India. Portugal immediately established the Demarcação Diamantina (the Diamond District, a restricted zone controlled by the Crown) and began systematic extraction using enslaved African labour. At its peak in the 18th century, Diamantina exported diamonds worth more than gold production in the rest of Minas Gerais. The end of the diamond monopoly came in the 1820s and definitively in the 1870s when the South African kimberlite pipes were discovered. The…