Baroque Highlands — Belo Horizonte to OuroPreto.

Minas Gerais holds Brazil's greatest concentration of baroque colonial architecture, and this 200km route connects modern capital Belo Horizonte with two UNESCO masterpieces: the cobblestone imperial city of Ouro Preto and Brazil's first city, Mariana. The BR-356 climbs through the Serra do Espinhaço on excellent asphalt past iron ore formations and eucalyptus forests before dropping into the dramatically hilly terrain around Ouro Preto — a city where 18th-century churches, fountains, and palaces are preserved almost entirely unchanged from the gold rush era. The Museu da Inconfidência tells Brazil's most compelling story of rebellion, while Mariana's twin-towered cathedral is one of colonial Latin America's finest civic monuments.