Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE INCONFIDÊNCIA MINEIRA
Ouro Preto is most famous in Brazil as the birthplace of the
Inconfidência Mineira
(the “Minas
Conspiracy”), the first attempt to free Brazil from the Portuguese. Inspired by the French
Revolution, and heartily sick of the heavy taxes levied by a bankrupt Portugal, a group of twelve
prominent town citizens - known as the Inconfidentes - led by
Joaquim José da Silva Xavier
began in 1789 to discuss organizing a rebellion. Xavier was a dentist, known to everyone as
Tiradentes (“teeth-puller”). Another of the conspirators was
Tomás Gonzaga
, whose hopeless
love poems to the beautiful
Marília Dirceu
, promised by her family to another, made the couple
into the Brazilian equivalent of Romeo and Juliet: “When you appear at dawn, all rumpled/like a
badly wrapped parcel, no ribbons or flowers/how Nature shines, how much lovelier you seem”.
The conspiracy proved a fiasco and all were betrayed and arrested before any uprising was
organized. The leaders were condemned to hang, but the Portuguese, realizing they could ill
afford to offend the inhabitants of a state whose taxes kept them afloat, arranged a
royal
reprieve
, commuting the sentence to exile in Angola and Mozambique. Unfortunately the
messenger arrived two days too late to save Tiradentes, marked as the first to die. He was
hanged where the column now stands in the square that bears his name, his head stuck on
a post and his limbs dispatched to the other mining towns to serve as a warning.
2
Vargas brought back the bodies of the Inconfidêntes (see box above) to a proper shrine,
and sensitively restored the crumbling monuments. Since the 1980s,
tourism
and
aluminium
production have been the city's main sources of income, the latter attracting
job-hungry migrants, many of whom end up living in hillside
favelas
.
Museu de Ciência e Técnica
Praça Tiradentes 20 • Tues-Sun noon-5pm • R$6 •
T
31 3559 3118,
W
museu.em.ufop.br
At the heart of Ouro Preto lies its main square,
Praça Tiradentes
, dominated by the
Escola de Minas
, which is housed in the old governor's palace. Established in 1876, it's
the best mining school in the country and part of the Universidade Federal de Ouro
Preto, though the main building now doubles as the absorbing
Museu de Ciência e
Técnica
, its galleries scattered around the central courtyard in between ramshackle
lecture rooms. The museum primarily explores the history of mining, minerals and
metals in Minas Gerais through models and old machinery (there's also a fossil section),
though the main draw is the
Mineralogy
gallery where gold, huge amethyst and quartz
crystals, silver, diamonds and other precious stones are beautifully displayed. Labels in
the museum are in Portuguese only, but there are English translations on cards in most
rooms. The building itself, with a fine marble entrance, dates from the 1740s, but the
inside was gutted during the nineteenth century and not improved by it.
Museu da Inconfidência
Praça Tiradentes 139 • Tues-Sun noon-5.30pm • R$8 •
T
31 3551 1121,
W
museuinconfidencia.com.br
The illuminating
Museu da Inconfidência
is housed in the former
Casa de Câmara
e Cadeira
, the old city hall and prison, a glorious eighteenth-century palace that
provides a perfect example of the classical grace of Minas colonial architecture with its
beautifully restored interior, though many of the huge, dimly lit rooms, so well suited
to the display of
arte sacra
, were once dungeons. The museum is primarily a shrine to
the doomed Inconfidência (see box above), with the ground floor charting the early
history of Ouro Preto leading up to the 1789 plot through marvellously displayed
relics of eighteenth-century daily life, from sedan chairs, saddles and kitchen utensils
(including the seal the bishop used to stamp his coat of arms on his cakes), to
horrendous instruments used to punish slaves.
The spiritual heart of the museum is an antechamber holding original documents -
including the execution order and birth and death registrations of
Tiradentes
- leading
into a solemn room containing his remains and those of his fellow conspirators,
