The official history credits the chapel - Três Corações for the three holy hearts. But Mineiros like a good story, and two other origin theories circulate. One says the Verde River winds around the town in a pattern that traces three interlinked hearts when seen from a certain angle. The more poetic version goes like this: three cowboys passing through from Goiás came upon three women - Jacyra, Jussara, and Moema - and fell in love with them, simultaneously, each man finding his heart among the three. All three stories likely carry some truth. The chapel was real and named first. But the other stories, whispered in Minas cafés, kept the romance of the name alive long after the chapel's pastors had stopped claiming authorship.

In 1884, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil and the imperial family came to Três Corações do Rio Verde to inaugurate the Minas & Rio railroad, connecting the town to Cruzeiro in São Paulo province. Three months after the royal visit, the town was emancipated and officially became a city. It was already growing fast - the chapel had been expanded in 1790 by Captain Domingos Dias de Barros, the son-in-law of founder Tomé Martins da Costa, and the parish of Três Sacratíssimos Corações had opened to the public in 1832. When Pedro II dedicated the railway, he was validating what local leaders had already built. In 1923, the town simplified its name from the formal Três Corações do Rio Verde to just Três Corações.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento was the son of Dondinho, a journeyman footballer, and Celeste, his mother. He left Três Corações as a boy when his father's career took the family to Bauru in São Paulo state, and it was there he was discovered and signed by Santos. But Três Corações has never let go. A statue of Pelé stands in a plaza near downtown. The local football stadium - previously Estádio Elias Arbex - was officially renamed Estádio Municipal Rei Pelé in April 2023, a posthumous tribute after his death in December 2022. With a capacity of 3,800, it hosts Atlético de Três Corações. The renaming was not ceremonial gesture alone; locals had been calling it the Pelé stadium unofficially for decades.

Três Corações also produced Carlos Luz, the nineteenth president of Brazil - and so far the shortest-serving. In November 1955, Luz held the presidential office for just three days before being ousted in a military coup. He had stepped into the role as acting president while President João Café Filho was hospitalized. The Armed Forces ministers suspected Luz of planning to prevent the inauguration of Juscelino Kubitschek, who had just won the recent election, and moved against him on November 11. It was the Preventative Coup of November 11, and it ended Luz's claim to the presidency almost before it began. He went back to private life and Three Hearts stayed small. That a town of this size produced both the greatest footballer and the briefest president is one of those quiet Brazilian historical accidents.

Três Corações sits close to the circumcenter of Brazil's three largest metropolitan areas: Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo. From the town, Belo Horizonte is 287 kilometers away, São Paulo 295, and Rio de Janeiro 360. That geographic accident turned Três Corações into a strategic commercial hub - a logistics point that can reach any of the three megacities within a half-day's drive. The BR-381 (Rodovia Fernão Dias) passes eight kilometers away, carrying traffic between Belo Horizonte and São Paulo. The Furnas reservoir - a major Minas Gerais hydroelectric lake - sits about 40 kilometers to the northwest. The town's population of around 80,032 (2020 estimate) makes it one of the larger cities in southern Minas Gerais, but it has kept a small-town feeling that matches its place in the emotional geography of the state.

Cattle raising - both dairy and beef - drives a significant part of the local economy, alongside coffee, corn, potatoes, beans, and rice. The region's signature mineral resource is São Tomé stone, a quartzite used in civil construction that takes its name from neighboring São Tomé das Letras. Light industry produces toys, highway signs, fertilizers, leather, milk products, steel wheels, aluminum wheels, copper wires, and animal feed. The University of Vale do Rio Verde (UNINCOR) offers programs including dentistry, maintained by local authorities. The climate is humid subtropical - wet warm summers, dry cool winters, with an annual average temperature of 19.2°C. December is the wettest month; July the driest. It is a moderate, productive, fertile corner of the state - the kind of place where the extraordinary, when it happens, feels like the natural product of ordinary days.