Passos

About Passos

Passos takes its name from a devotion: in the 1830s settlers built a chapel to the Senhor Bom Jesus dos Passos on what is now the main square, and the village around it, first known as Arraial da Capoeira, eventually became a city named simply Passos. Gold strikes at nearby Jacuí had drawn colonists from Portugal, São Paulo and older Minas towns in the eighteenth century, giving the place its half-paulista, half-mineiro roots.

The railway of the Companhia Mogiana arrived in 1921, but the real turning point came in the 1960s with the Furnas hydroelectric dam, which transformed Passos from a rural town into the commercial hub of the region. Today it has about 117,000 people and is known across Brazil for its jeans and clothing workshops, along with furniture making and farming.

Visitors find a pleasant inland city with leafy squares, historic churches and a cultural centre, set near the Rio Grande and its great reservoirs. The canyons and waterfalls of the Serra da Canastra lie within a day's drive, making Passos a useful base for the region.