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The cidades historicas of Minas Gerais - small enough really to be towns rather than cities - were founded within a couple of decades of each other in the early eighteenth century. Rough and violent mining camps in their early days, they were soon transformed by mineral wealth into treasure houses, not merely of gold, but also of Baroque art and architecture. Well preserved and carefully maintained, together the towns form one of the most impressive sets of colonial remains in the Americas, comparable only to the silver-mining towns that flourished in Mexico at roughly the same time. In Brazil, they are equalled only by the remnants of the plantation culture of the Northeast, to which they contributed much of the gold you see in the gilded churches of Olinda and Salvador. Although some have acquired a modern urban fringe, all the historic cities have centres untouched by modern developers - and a couple, like Tiradentes , look very much as they did two centuries ago. All have colonial churches - Ouro Preto has thirteen - at least one good museum, steep cobbled streets, ornate mansions and the particular atmosphere of a place soaked in history. It was in these cities that the Inconfidencia Mineira , Brazil's first bungling attempt to throw off the Portuguese yoke, was played out in 1789. And here the great sculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa, Aleijadinho or the "little cripple", spent all his life, leaving behind him a body of work unmatched by any other figure working in the contemporary Baroque tradition.
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