Belo Horizonte is Brazil's first planned capital, laid out on graph paper in 1895 over the demolished village of Curral del Rey. Around it sit the gold towns that financed an empire — Sabará is 25 minutes east, with churches begun in 1701.
The 1883 Fazenda do Leitão farmhouse is the only building left from Curral del Rey, the village demolished in 1897 to build the capital; rooms hold the surveyors' plans and photographs of the erased settlement. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
A tiny 1717 chapel 25km east, its gilded chancel painted with chinoiserie panels copied from Macau lacquerwork that arrived on Portuguese trade routes — the only Chinese-influenced baroque interior in Brazil. Open 09:00–17:00.
Set in the 1730s royal foundry house where Crown officers melted Sabará's gold and cut the king's fifth, the quinto. Original scales, crucibles, bar moulds and assay rooms remain, with mining tools worked by enslaved labour.
Sabará's mother church, begun in 1701 with the first gold strikes: soapstone portals, a heavily gilded chancel and a painted ceiling paid for by mine owners buying salvation. The oldest standing church near Belo Horizonte.
Aarão Reis drew this ceremonial axis in 1895 for a capital built from nothing in four years; the 1898 Palácio da Liberdade housed Minas governors for 112 years until the seat moved out in 2010. Interiors open Fri–Sun.
Niemeyer's 1954 curved apartment slab bends around the square's south corner, his answer to the eclectic palaces facing it. Residents still live inside; the ground-floor colonnade and pilotis read clearly from the pavement.
The 1897 state treasury building now stages the history of Minas: reconstructed 19th-century interiors, Guimarães Rosa's study, and rooms on the 1789 Inconfidência Mineira conspiracy against the Crown. Tue–Fri 10:00–17:30.
Praça Sete's 1922 obelisk marks the crossing of Afonso Pena and Amazonas, the two axes of Aarão Reis's grid; on the corner the 1932 Cine Theatro Brasil keeps its art deco marquee and mosaic lobby, restored as a concert hall.
Opened in 1897 alongside the city itself, this necropolis holds the capital's founders, the Italian stonemasons who cut its facades, and rows of art nouveau mausoleums recording every epidemic and boom since.
The 1906 neo-gothic church on Rua Tupis was raised by Franciscans as the new capital's first large downtown temple; its granite spires and German stained glass survived the 1950s office-tower boom that swallowed the block.
Paulo Mendes da Rocha reworked the 1897 Palácio Rosa into 44 rooms on three centuries of Minas mining, from slave-worked gold pits and the quinto tax to the iron ore that still funds the state. Tue–Sun 12:00–18:00.
The 1929 concrete viaduct crosses the old rail yards into Santa Tereza, the railway workers' quarter that kept its low houses and corner bars while the centre rose. Bar do Orlando on Rua Mármore has poured since 1968.