Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais Luxury Travel

Translating to “General Mines,” Minas Gerias is an inland state due north of Rio de Janeiro. Famously, the region was the setting of an extended gold rush that began in the 1690s and produced immeasurable wealth for the colonizing Portuguese Empire. An explosion of enterprising miners and half a million slave laborers unearthed precious metals which traveled along the Caminho do Ouro (Gold Trail) to reach the port of Paraty for Europe.

A visit to modern-day Minas Gerias brings history buffs off Brazil’s well-trodden tourist routes to colonial towns preserved in time. Best experienced as a privately guided road trip bookended by the state capital of Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro (travel in either direction), make the charming, cobblestone towns of Ouro Preto and Tiradentes your anchors. Enveloped by picture-pretty hills, adorned with white-washed facades topped with red roofs, and dotted with handsome Baroque churches, you’ll get a sense of the inordinate wealth and history that passed through Minas Gerias. Ibitipoca, Miranda, and Petropolis make splendid road trip stop-offs, too.

Art and design lovers will appreciate touring the region’s Oscar Niemeyer-designed buildings (a key figure in the modern movement) and Inhotim, a 1,945–acre museum of contemporary art and botanical garden.