Belo Horizonte

The metropolis was once a small village, founded by João Leite da Silva Ortiz, a bandeirante explorer from São Paulo. The explorer settled in the region in 1701, leading a gold rush expedition. He then established a farm called "Curral d'el Rey," archaic Portuguese for the "King's Corral". 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 factor contributing to the growth of the village was people immigrating from the São Francisco River region, who had to pass through Curral d'el Rey to reach southern parts of Brazil. Travelers usually visited a small wooden chapel, where they prayed for a safe trip, so the chapel was named Capela da Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem, which means "Chapel of Our Lady of the Good Journey. …

The term "Grande BH" ("Greater Belo Horizonte") denotes any of various definitions for the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte. The legally defined Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte consists of 34 municipalities in total, and a population of around six million inhabitants (as of 2021, according to Brazil's National Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)). The intense process of urbanization that is taking place in the metropolitan region has made some of the political boundaries between municipalities in the region obsolete. The city is now composed of a relatively contiguous urban area, centred on Belo Horizonte, which extends out into municipalities such as Contagem, Betim, Nova Lima, Raposos, Ribeirão das Neves, Ibirité, Santa Luzia and Sabará, among others. …

Clube da Esquina is one of the most important musical movements in the musical history of Brazil. It originated in the mid-1960s, and since then its members have been hugely influential in Brazilian and even international music, some like Milton Nascimento and Toninho Horta achieving worldwide acclaim. Other people involved in the movement include musicians, songwriters, composers, conductors and lyricists, such as Tavinho Moura, Wagner Tiso, Andersen Viana, Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, Beto Guedes, Flávio Venturini, Toninho Horta, Márcio Borges and Fernando Brant, among others. The band Uakti, known for performing with self-built musical instruments, originated in Belo Horizonte under the influence of Walter Smetak and the Composition School from Bahia. …

Belo Horizonte receives large numbers of visitors, as it is in the Brazilian main economic axis, exerting influence even on other states. Multinational and Brazilian companies, such as Google, Deloitte, Thoughtworks, Localiza and Oi, maintain offices in the city. The service sector plays a very important role in the economy of Belo Horizonte, being responsible for 85% of the city's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with other industry making up most of the remaining 15%. Belo Horizonte has a developed industrial sector, being traditionally a hub of the Brazilian steel-making and metallurgical industries, as the state of Minas Gerais has always been very rich in minerals, specifically iron ore. Belo Horizonte is the distribution and processing centre of a rich agricultural and mining region and the nucleus of a burgeoning industrial complex. …

Belo Horizonte is served by two airports: Tancredo Neves/Confins International Airport, dedicated to domestic and international traffic. It is located in the municipalities of Lagoa Santa and Confins, 38 kilometres (24 mi) from Belo Horizonte, and was opened in January 1984. Plans for gradual expansion to meet growing demand had been already drawn up from the airport's inception. The airport has one of the lowest rates of shutdown for bad weather in the country. It ran at limited capacity until 2005, when a large proportion of Pampulha Airport air traffic was transferred to Confins. There are direct international flights to/from Buenos Aires, Fort Lauderdale, Lisbon, Orlando, Panama City, and Santiago; Pampulha – Carlos Drummond de Andrade Airport, dedicated to general aviation. The city is connected to the rest of Minas Gerais state and the country by a number of roadways. …

According to the 2022 census, there were 2,315,560 people residing in the city of Belo Horizonte. The census revealed the following numbers: 1,008,878 White people (43.6%), 986,302 Pardo (Multiracial) people (42.6%), 312,920 Black people (13.5%), 4,881 Asian people (0.2%), 2,486 Amerindian people (0.1%). In 2010, the city had 428,893 opposite-sex couples and 1,090 same-sex couples. The population of Belo Horizonte was 53.1% female and 46.9% male. The Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, called Greater Belo Horizonte, is the 3rd most populous of Brazil, after only Greater São Paulo (with 19,672,582 people, first in Brazil and 5th in the world) and Greater Rio de Janeiro (with 14,387,000 people). The city is the 6th most populous of the country. During the 18th century, Minas Gerais received many Portuguese immigrants, mainly from Northern Portugal as well as many enslaved Africans. …