Belo Horizonte is the cheapest of Brazil's big three cities. A dozen museums around Praça da Liberdade charge nothing, city canteens serve a full hot lunch for R$3, and the mountain walling in the city is a free public park.
The former seat of Minas government, a 1897 French-style garden square ringed by twelve museums that all charge zero admission. Palm avenues, the Palácio da Liberdade and Niemeyer's 1954 curved apartment block are free to walk. Museums open 10:00–17:00, shut Mondays.
A 1920s neoclassical bank on the square's edge with rotating free exhibitions, a free cinema room screening restored Brazilian films, and a courtyard café. Open Wed–Mon 10:00–21:00; entry is free but needs a timed ticket reserved online the same morning.
Free interactive museum in an 1897 palace covering Minas life from colonial gold mining to modern industry across 18 rooms, including a full-scale reconstructed farmhouse kitchen and a holographic Guimarães Rosa. Open Tue–Sun 10:00–17:30.
Eighteen hectares of 1897 parkland dropped in the middle of downtown: fig-tree avenues, three lakes, a bandstand and free capoeira rodas on weekend afternoons. Pedal boats are R$12 for 20 minutes. Gates 06:00–18:00, closed Mondays.
Skip the sit-down restaurants and eat the way locals do: standing at the balcões. Hot pão de queijo runs R$3–5, a cafezinho R$3, a doce de leite bar R$6. Free to wander all 420 stalls. Open Mon–Sat 07:00–18:00, Sunday until 13:00.
The city-subsidised canteen puts rice, beans, a meat, salad, a side and juice on one tray for R$3 — the cheapest hot lunch in Brazil. Served weekdays 10:30–14:00. The queue starts forming around 11:15 and payment is cash only.
Roughly 3,000 stalls stretched over three kilometres of closed avenue every Sunday — Brazil's largest open-air craft fair. Free to browse; the food aisle does sanduíche de pernil for R$12, caldo de mandioca for R$8, mate gelado for R$5. Runs 08:00–14:00.
The pedestrian stretch above the Viaduto Santa Tereza where BH gathers to watch the sun go down over the rail yards and the skyline. Graffiti walls the whole way, no entry fee, and vendors sell cans of beer for R$6 and pastéis for R$8.
Brazil's largest urban park — 2.35 million square metres on the Serra do Curral slope, with free entry, six marked forest trails, spring-fed streams and resident howler monkeys. Open Tue–Sun 08:00–18:00. A free internal shuttle climbs to the upper terraces.
The stone terrace where João Paulo II held mass in 1980, sitting at around 1,000m with the entire city spread below and the Serra do Curral ridge behind. Free, open around the clock; coconut water and sandwich carts keep lunch near R$10.
Free 30-hectare park along the Pampulha lagoon shore with a paved 4km loop, wetland birdlife, exercise stations and picnic lawns. Open Tue–Sun 06:00–18:00. Getting there by city bus from the centre costs R$5.25 each way, around 45 minutes.
The square at the heart of BH's most stubbornly local neighbourhood, where free open-air seresta and samba circles run on weekend evenings. Bottled beer at the surrounding botecos is R$9, a pastel R$7, and nobody charges a cover.