Chica da Silva was an enslaved woman who became, through her relationship with the royal diamond contractor João Fernandes de Oliveira, one of the wealthiest and most influential people in 18th-century colonial Brazil. Her house on Praça Lobo de Mesquita is now a museum, and the building itself — a large colonial mansion with a central courtyard — gives a sense of the scale of the fortune that passed through Diamantina's diamond trade.
The museum focuses on her life and the social context of 18th-century Minas Gerais, including the slave economy that underpinned the diamond trade. The legend around Chica da Silva — a popular figure in Brazilian culture, the subject of novels and TV series — is part of what the museum discusses: separating the historical woman from the mythology that grew up around her after her death.