6 Best Bars in Minas Gerais, Brazil

For fabulous city views and some of Brazil's best cachaças, head to this bar where musicians perform daily except on Monday. The music is mainly pop-country and forró, and the audience is young and hip. You can party all night here: Alambique opens at 10 and closes at dawn.

A traditional bar in a colonial building owned by Brazilian comedian and actor Saulo Laranjeira, Arrumação specializes in cachaças and serves excellent appetizers. It often hosts performances and concerts.

Belo Horizonte's intellectual beau monde collects at this café to eat dainty salads and drink imported wine in a beautiful interior surrounded by books and art. DJs spin music on most nights, and there's sometimes live jazz.

A hip and young crowd ranging in age from 18 to mid-30s gathers at A Obra, a basement-level pub with a dance floor. Music styles vary from indie rock to classic rock and more, but this is always a good place to go for something other than mainstream music.

Belo Horizonte's best and most authentic live-music venue is Pedacinhos do Céu, literally, "little pieces of heaven." This small bar is known mostly for choro, an instrumental version of samba, for which guitars dominate the sound. Groups of musicians gather here with their cavaquinhos (small four-string guitars), violões (guitars), and flutes for jam sessions that last late into the night. The bar is named after a song by composer Waldir Azevedo (1923–80) and provides access to his archive.

By day a furniture store and an architecture office, this space transforms at night into a venue for jazz, blues, and Brazilian and Cuban rhythms.