In the late 18th century, a group of middle-class mineiros - intellectuals, young officers, a few priests - met secretly and began planning rebellion. They had been reading about the American and French Revolutions. They saw in their gold-mining province, taxed mercilessly by the Portuguese Crown, an analog to colonial Massachusetts. Their leader was Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier, whose day job as a dentist earned him the nickname Tiradentes - tooth-puller. The conspiracy was betrayed before it could rise. Tiradentes was hanged and his body quartered in 1792; his companions were exiled. But Brazil's flag eventually borrowed Minas's design, and every April 21 the country observes Tiradentes Day. The Trail of Tiradentes - Ouro Preto, Mariana, Sao Joao del-Rei, Congonhas, Tiradentes itself - is still the richest colonial-architecture circuit in South America.

The name means exactly what it says: General Mines. Gold, diamonds, iron ore, gemstones - all found in abundance under these hills, and all exploited on a scale that made Portugal wealthy and Brazil the center of imperial attention. The gold rush of the early 1700s brought tens of thousands of prospectors into the wilderness. Many died of disease or hunger. The enslaved labor force, brought from Africa in enormous numbers to work the mines, suffered brutally. Quilombos - self-liberated settlements of escaped enslaved people - dotted the hills throughout the 18th century; more than 120 are estimated to have existed in the captaincy. Today's mining continues: in February 2006 a diamond-smuggling ring was broken up for passing Mineiran stones off as South African. Iron ore still flows out of the Iron Quadrangle by the trainload.

Minas prides itself on its food, and comida mineira restaurants can be found in every Brazilian state - an export the way Tuscan cuisine exports from Italy. The fundamentals: angu, a hearty polenta-like dish served with sausage and collard greens; feijao tropeiro, brown beans cooked with pork rinds, eggs, garlic, onion, and mandioca flour, born in the saddlebags of 18th-century drovers; frango com quiabo, chicken and okra thick with garlic and onion served over rice; queijo mineiro, the white table cheese that has conquered the national pantry. Bolinhos de mandioca - fried manioc-and-potato fritters - come to the table as automatically as bread elsewhere. Quibebe uses squash. Pao de queijo, the cheese roll, is eaten at all hours. Belo Horizonte, the capital, is said to have more than ten thousand bars and restaurants and a reputation as a Brazilian drinkers' paradise. The cachaca of Minas competes with Paraty's for the title of the country's finest.

Mineiros speak Portuguese like other Brazilians, but with an accent that even other Brazilians sometimes find opaque. Vowels swallow. Final syllables drop. The word uai appears liberally, often at the end of sentences, often as pure emphasis - it sounds like the English why but means nothing in particular. The word trem becomes a universal substitute: Me passa aquele trem ali - pass me that thing over there. Middle-class young people usually speak at least some English; Spanish, despite the geographic proximity to the rest of South America, is spoken by almost nobody. A mineiro speaking slowly to a newcomer is extending a courtesy. A mineiro speaking at normal speed to another mineiro is speaking a dialect of Portuguese that rewards long listening.

Belo Horizonte, the capital, is a modernist city of 2.5 million with curving Oscar Niemeyer pavilions at Pampulha and museum-grade mineirissimo on every menu. Ouro Preto is the most famous of the colonial towns - a UNESCO World Heritage site whose baroque churches, sculpted by the mulatto master Aleijadinho, remain among the finest sacred art in the Americas. Diamantina preserves 18th-century buildings on cobblestone hills and produces the music that gave Brazil the nickname 'little America' for the town of Uberlandia. Tiradentes itself is smaller, quieter, the kind of place where horse-drawn carts still carry flour on market days. Sete Lagoas sits among its seven lakes. In the south, hydro-mineral spa towns - Caxambu, Lambari, Sao Lourenco, Pocos de Caldas, Monte Verde - offer cooler altitudes and European-style waters. The national parks at Serra da Canastra and Serra do Cipo protect waterfalls and the endangered Brazilian merganser duck.