São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras sits roughly 35 km (22 mi) from Diamantina on a plateau within the Serra do Espinhaço, and the drive in from the main road crosses terrain that has changed little since the 18th century. The hamlet arose in the early 1700s in step with gold prospecting throughout the Serro Frio comarca, its enslaved workforce extracting ore that flowed directly to Lisbon without meaningfully enriching the place itself. That economic stagnation preserved what growth would have demolished: a compact colonial casario of whitewashed houses, stone-walled lots built by enslaved laborers, and two small churches — the Igreja Matriz de São Gonçalo and the Igreja Nossa Senhora do Rosário — arranged around a quiet square. The village sits at the junction of the old trail between Diamantina and Serro; a legend attached to its name holds that a statue of São Gonçalo refused to remain in the church at Milho Verde and returned on foot, leaving footprints in the road between the two settlements.