UNESCO baroque gold city — Brazil's most beautiful colonial town
Ouro Preto (Black Gold) sits in the Minas Gerais highlands at 1,100m, its steep cobblestone streets connecting 13 Baroque churches whose interiors are gilded with the gold that once funded the entire Portuguese empire. The sculptor Aleijadinho — a mixed-race enslaved artisan who lost the use of his hands and worked with chisels strapped to his wrists — produced the finest Baroque sculpture in the Americas here. Mineiro cuisine (feijão tropeiro, frango com quiabo, doce de leite) is the comfort food of rural Brazil.
Gold was discovered in the region in 1693, and within decades Ouro Preto (then Villa Rica) was the largest city in the Americas south of Lima, with a population exceeding 80,000. The Inconfidência Mineira of 1789 — Brazil's first independence movement, inspired by the American Revolution — was plotted here; its leader Tiradentes was executed and the town became a symbol of Brazilian nationalism. UNESCO listed it in 1980 as one of the finest examples of Baroque architecture in the world.