Brazil
Ouro Preto
Baroque churches dripping gold leaf in a mining town where the cobblestones still remember revolution.
Gold leaf catches the candlelight inside the Igreja de São Francisco de Assis, Aleijadinho's carved soapstone prophets staring down from the ceiling. Outside, the cobblestones pitch steeply downhill, slick from overnight rain, the rooftops of thirteen baroque churches visible from every high point in this town built on exhausted goldmines.
Ouro Preto is a UNESCO World Heritage city in Minas Gerais and the most complete colonial baroque townscape in the Americas. Founded in 1711 at the height of the Brazilian gold rush, it became the richest city in the New World within decades. The sculptor Aleijadinho — Antônio Francisco Lisboa — created the churches that define Ouro Preto's skyline, carving with tools strapped to his wrists after disease crippled his hands. The city is also the birthplace of the Inconfidência Mineira, the 1789 independence conspiracy whose leader, Tiradentes, was executed and dismembered by the Portuguese crown. The steep geography that made mining possible also preserved the town: too hilly for modernisation, Ouro Preto fossilised its 18th century instead of demolishing it.
Solo
Ouro Preto's republic houses — shared student residences dating to the 1930s — give solo travellers a social anchor. The town is compact enough to walk in a day but layered enough to explore for a week.
Couple
Colonial pousadas in converted casarões, feijão tropeiro by candlelight, and baroque churches at every turn make Ouro Preto one of Brazil's most atmospheric towns for two.
Friends
The student population keeps Ouro Preto's nightlife lively, and the town's festivals — especially Carnaval and the Semana Santa processions — turn its steep streets into stages. The boteco culture is strong.
- The Igreja de São Francisco de Assis (1774) has an interior of carved soapstone painted with gold leaf — widely regarded as the peak of Brazilian baroque.
- The Museu da Inconfidência holds the original trial documents and personal effects of Tiradentes, executed in 1792 for leading Brazil's first independence movement.
- The town is built on steep hillsides — a fifteen-minute climb from any central square reveals views over red-tiled rooftops and baroque towers.
- A network of 18th-century townhouses operates as pousadas within walking distance of the central praças.
Feijão tropeiro — the miners' meal of beans, farofa, eggs, sausage, and collard greens — at every boteco.
Frango com quiabo e angu at colonial-era restaurants carved into the hillside along Rua São José.
Doce de leite and goiabada cascão from the Mercado Municipal — the Romeu e Julieta of Minas.
Meknès
Morocco
A sultan's granary so vast it held twelve years of food behind gilded gates.
Rouen
France
Half-timbered lanes winding to the square where Joan of Arc's fire still scorches the stone.
Khajuraho
India
Elaborate sandstone temples covered in explicitly acrobatic carvings rising unexpectedly from the flat central plains.
Ísafjörður
Iceland
The Westfjords capital clinging to a spit of land between mountains so steep roads spiral.
Chapada do Araripe
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Cretaceous pterodactyl fossils embedded in plateau rock at the Americas' first UNESCO Global Geopark.
Sete Cidades
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Rock formations so orderly that scientists once debated whether a lost civilisation built them.
Bananal Island
Brazil
The world's largest river island — a Karajá homeland where the Araguaia splits into two channels.
Ilha de Marajó
Brazil
An island the size of Switzerland where water buffalo roam free and the roads are rivers.