Edifício Maletta

Modernist office-and-arcade building whose ground floor is the spiritual home of Belo Horizonte bar culture

The Edifício Maletta is a 1960 modernist office building in the centro that everyone in Belo Horizonte knows because of its ground floor — an open commercial arcade that became, almost accidentally, the gathering place for the city's bohemian intelligentsia. Bookshops, record stores, small bars, and even smaller cafes fill the space, and by ten o'clock most evenings the arcade and the surrounding pavement are full of people drinking and arguing.

Bar do Bolão, Café Cancun, and a dozen other tiny spots are the names to know. The crowd is mostly local — Maletta is not really on the tourist map — and the conversation is what makes it. Worth at least one evening of your stay.

bars and cafes landmark
A story
When Edifício Maletta opened in 1960 it was the most modern building in central Belo Horizonte. Its open-arcade ground floor, by chance more than design, became the meeting point for the city's intellectuals, journalists, and artists, and the small bars and bookshops that filled the arcade still trade on that history sixty years later.