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History
Estação Square in Belo Horizonte.The metropolis was once a small village, founded by João Leite da Silva Ortiz, a bandeirante explorer from São Paulo. Having found a location with pleasant weather, a nice landscape and good soil for farming, the explorer settled in the region in 1701, leaving a gold hunting expedition. He then established a farm called "Curral d'el Rey" - archaic Portuguese for the "King's Corral, which in modern Portuguese would be spelled Curral do Rei." The farm's wealth and success encouraged people from surrounding places to move into the region, and Curral del Rey became a village surrounded by farms.
Another important growth factor of the village were the migrants from the São Francisco river region, who had to pass through Curral d'el Rey in order to reach southern parts of Brazil. Travelers usually visited a small wooden chapel, where they prayed for a safe trip. Due to that, the chapel was named Capela da Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem, which means "Chapel of Our Lady of the Good Journey." After the construction of Belo Horizonte, the old baroque chapel was replaced by a neo-gothic church which became the city's cathedral.
The previous capital of Minas Gerais, Ouro Preto, was a symbol of both the monarchic Brazilian Empire and the period when most of Brazilian income was due to mining, and that never pleased the members of the Inconfidência Mineira, republican intellectuals who conspired against the Portuguese dominion of Brazil. In 1889 Brazil became a republic, and it was agreed that a new state capital, in tune with a modern and prosperous Minas Gerais, had to be set.
A small farm in Curral del Rey.In 1893, due to good climatic and topographic conditions, Curral Del Rey was elected by Minas Gerais governor Afonso Pena from other cities as the spot for the new economical and cultural center of the state, under the new name of "Cidade de Minas," or Minas City.
Aarão Reis, an urbanist from Pará, was then set to design the first planned city of Brazil, and then Cidade de Minas was inaugurated finally in 1897, with many unfinished constructions as the Brazilian Government set a deadline for its completion. Inhabitation of the city was subsidized by the local government, through the concession of free empty lots and funding for building houses. An interesting feature of Belo Horizonte Reis designed was the downtown street plan, featuring a regular array of perpendicular and diagonal streets, named after Brazilian states and Brazilian indigenous tribes.
An old picture of Belo Horizonte.In 1906, the name was then changed to Belo Horizonte, and at that time the city was experiencing a considerable industrial expansion that increased its commercial and service sectors. From its very beginning, the city's original plan prohibited workers to live inside the urban area which was defined by Avenida do Contorno (a long avenue which goes around the city's central areas), reserved for the public sector functionaries (hence the name of the still trendy neighborhood "Funcionários"), and causing an accelerated occupation outside the city's area well provided with infrastructure since its very beginning. Obviously, the city's original planners didn't count on its population growth afterwards, which proved especially intense in the last twenty years of the 20th century. |
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