Ouro Preto

A church designed by Aleijadinho, who also carved its soapstone front, with a ceiling painted by Ataide. The sloping square outside holds soapstone craft stalls every day.

The town's mother church, its interior wrapped wall to wall in gilded woodcarving, a world away from the plain front outside. A museum of sacred art occupies the basement, seen on the same ticket.

The old council house and jail on one side of Praca Tiradentes has become a museum, with a chamber holding the remains of those who plotted independence from Portugal. At night the square is floodlit and draws strollers.

An old gold mine between Ouro Preto and Mariana, entered by riding a mine cart down a sloping shaft. A clear underground lake lies where the shaft ends, and the tunnels stay cool even in high summer, so bring a layer.

The neighbouring city 12 km away, which served as the first capital of Minas Gerais. Its cathedral holds an 18th-century pipe organ built in Germany, heard in recitals on fixed weekdays.

The 18th-century office where mined gold was taxed, its basement still holding the quarters where enslaved people were confined. Upstairs it shows old coins and the scales used to weigh gold.

A state park on the mountain south of town, its peak named with an Indigenous phrase for stone and child. A big rock and a small one on top guided the old gold seekers, and the climb is long, so hikers set off in the early morning.

A hilltop church tied to the legend of Chico Rei, an African king brought over in slavery who bought his freedom and built it. The climb is breathless, but its yard takes in the churches on the opposite hill in one glance.

In Holy Week before Easter, residents spend the night laying pictures of coloured sawdust and petals down the streets. The dawn procession walks straight over them, and the pictures scatter underfoot.

A theatre opened in 1770, counted as the oldest working stage in South America. The house is small and the stage close, so even the back row can read the actors' faces.

Begun in 1727 to a design by Aleijadinho's father, this church holds Aleijadinho's own grave. A small museum inside covers his life and work. It sits on the slope of the eastern Antonio Dias quarter, a downhill walk from the main square.

Housed in the former novitiate beside the Carmo church, it holds hundreds of oratorios, small wooden altars kept at home or carried on journeys. They range from ones strapped to a mule to large gilded pieces, a window on faith in the gold-rush era.

Set up by the School of Mines, founded in 1876, in the former governors' palace on Praca Tiradentes, it crowds in mineral specimens from Brazil and beyond. One dark room shines ultraviolet light so the stones glow.

The Bom Jesus de Matosinhos sanctuary in nearby Congonhas, southwest, inscribed by UNESCO in 1985. Aleijadinho's twelve soapstone prophets line the churchyard stair, and six small chapels below hold his carved wooden Passion scenes.

A hamlet perched where a ridge south of Ouro Preto runs out, by tradition grown from a community of escaped slaves. Falls and pools fill the valleys around, so at weekends students and city folk book guesthouses to swim, then meet at roadside bars after dark.