Belo Horizonte: Pampulha & Food

Inaugurated on 12 December 1897 to replace hilly colonial Ouro Preto as the capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte was Brazil's first planned republican city. Chief engineer Aarão Reis drew a Washington- and Paris-inspired grid of diagonal boulevards framed by the circular ring of Avenida do Contorno, naming the intersecting streets after Brazilian states and Indigenous nations. Less than five decades later, in 1940, Mayor Juscelino Kubitschek invited a 32-year-old Oscar Niemeyer to design the lakeside pavilions of Pampulha, launching the architectural partnership that would later build the federal capital.

How the City Is Organised for Visitors

• Inside Avenida do Contorno (Centro, Lourdes, Savassi & Funcionários): The walkable heart of the city stretches from the 1929 Mercado Central and Mercado Novo south up the gentle hill to the museum mansions of Praça da Liberdade and the café-lined streets of Savassi and Lourdes.
• Pampulha (9 km North): Anchored by the shoreline of Lagoa da Pampulha, this northern garden district holds Niemeyer's UNESCO World Heritage buildings and the monumental Mineirão Stadium.
• Serra do Curral (Southern Ridge): Climbing past Mangabeiras brings you to Praça do Papa and Parque das Mangabeiras for sweeping sunset views over the metropolitan valley.

Day Trips Within Two Hours

What makes Belo Horizonte a practical cultural base is its pair of essential excursions: sixty kilometres southwest in Brumadinho lies Instituto Inhotim, where contemporary art galleries sit inside a tropical botanical garden, while one hundred kilometres southeast along the colonial route stands Ouro Preto, Brazil's eighteenth-century Baroque gold-rush town.