Ouro Preto and Mariana

This weekend I went to Ouro Preto and Mariana. It was a journey organized by a group of students for all the exchange students. As you can imagine, we had a lot of fun in a group with Brazilians, Germans, Mexicans, Peruvians, Bolivians, El Salvadorans and Koreans.

Ouro Preto is a colonial town very rich in history. Founded at the end of the 17th century, Ouro Preto (meaning Black Gold) was the focal point of the gold rush and Brazil's golden age in the 18th century under the Portuguese. At that time, it was the largest city in Brazil, with 100,000 inhabitants, even bigger than Rio de Janeiro and New York at that time. Ouro Preto was also capital of Minas Gerais from 1720 until 1897, when the capital was moved to the new, planned city of Belo Horizonte.

We used the opportunity to visit an old gold mine "Mina do Chico Rei". It's a system of 8 km of tunnels under the city. Chico Rei is the nick name of a famous slave. He was an African prince and was brought to Brazil together with his hole tribe to work in the gold mines. It was a very hard life with at least 14 hours of work every day, no daylight and very little to eat. Normally a slave did not survive longer than 2 years working under these conditions. Chico Rei worked very hard and one day managed to buy himself free. Finally, he even bought this mine and freed a lot of other slaves as well. In Ouro Preto he was as well respected as a ex-salve could be in that time, but the Portuguese saw him as a threat and reacted with a law that prohibited slaves to buy themselves free.

Ouro Preto today has a lot of art galleries and small shops with arts and crafts. Especially known is the "mercado de predra de sabão" - markets of soapstone.

On the next photos are may different types of sweets. Most of them made with "doce de leite" - a sweet and thick type of condensed milk.

How finds the humming bird? ;-)

The tremendous wealth attracted many artists, philosophers and writers from Europe. One of the most famous Brazilian artists from Ouro Preto is the architect and sculptor Aleijadinho. Translated this name means "The Little Cripple". Although disfigured and disabled, he continued sculpting with a chisel and hammer tied to his fingerless hands. The church São Francisco de Assis on the next photo was made by him.

All in all there are 23 churches in Ouro Preto! The reason for that is that every social group had to have their own church. There was the church for the rich, for the slaves, for the ex-slaves, for the intellectual,...

The building in the back is the Museu da Inconfidência. A very well made museum about the history of Ouro Preto. In 1789, Ouro Preto became the birthplace of the Inconfidência Mineira, a failed attempt to gain independence from Portugal. The leading figure, Tiradentes, was hanged as a threat to any future revolutionaries.

Mariana is the neighbour city of Ouro Preto. It's a lot smaller, but also very nice and also has a lot of churches... At this square compete the churches of to different fraternities.

Mariana is named after the Portuguese Queen Maria Ana from Austria, wife of João V. In our group we had a girl named Mariana! She has a lot in commune with her name giver, don't you think so?