Walk-in colonial gold mine tied to the legend of an enslaved king who bought his people's freedom
One of several colonial-era gold mines in town that visitors can enter. You walk crouched along a narrow tunnel cut into the rock, lit by bulbs that show the chisel marks of the enslaved workers who dug it by hand. The visit is short — fifteen minutes underground — but visceral in a way that no museum can be.
Wear shoes you don't mind getting dirty; the floor is damp and uneven. The above-ground building houses a small exhibit on the mine's history and Chico Rei's legend, with displays in Portuguese.
A story
The legend gives the mine its name. Chico Rei was supposedly an African king sold into slavery and shipped to Vila Rica, where he worked this mine. He hid gold dust in his hair and beneath his fingernails, washed it out at night, and over years bought his own freedom, then the mine itself, then the freedom of his people one by one. Historians dispute the details — some doubt he existed — but the story has been central to Brazilian black resistance for two centuries.