The Pampulha lagoon is an oval artificial lake on the north side of the city, surrounded by some of the most important modernist architecture in the Americas. In 1940, a young Oscar Niemeyer designed four buildings around its shore — the Church of São Francisco de Assis, the Pampulha Yacht Club, the Casa do Baile, and the Pampulha Casino (now an art museum). Together they invented a curving, sensual version of modernism that became Niemeyer's signature.
A nine-kilometre walking and cycling path runs all the way around the lake, with each of the four buildings about a kilometre apart. The Mineirão football stadium sits just to the north. A morning around the lake gives a fuller sense of why Belo Horizonte matters in twentieth-century architecture than any single building can.