A poetic tour.
How about the adventure of leafing through a book? That’s right, a self-guided walking tour of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais. To further enhance your experience in Ouro Preto, I offer my Poetic Tours, a unique and captivating experience through literature that begins with the book “Direceu e Marília” by Nelson Cruz. A light and captivating read that takes you through the streets and houses of our city in a beautiful, divinely illustrated copy.
In this book, Nelson Cruz's proposal is not just to recreate an episode from colonial Brazil, but to tell a love story by giving life to Dirceu and Marília, characters from the arcade Tomás Antônio Gonzagain his poems to his beloved Maria Doroteia. In Nelson's fiction, Dirceu remembers his lover as she sets off into exile in a mixture of explanation, reminiscence and farewell. In his mind he kisses Marília's hands, sees her desperation, imagines her going in search of him while he, Dirceu, sets out to find his greatest treasure. Instead of portraying these important characters as legacies of our history, Nelson preferred to imbue them with emotion and humanity. For the illustrations, the author searched for evidence of adventures in Vila Rica in the 17th century and retouched them with his personal interpretation. Rugendas and August de Saint-Hilaire were two of his most important references.
More works and tour options here will appear soon. Read on to see how it works.
To start your adventure, I recommend you have a copy of the book, but you can also use the Poetic Tour without reading it. I'm not making it available here on my website for now, but there are some bookstores in Ouro Preto (very nice ones, by the way) that have copies for sale. You can also purchase an edition online, see the links below:
Location of bookstores:
Buy online
Amazon [to the website]
How does it work?
As mentioned above, the story takes place in Dirceu and Marília in Ouro Preto. I've mapped the locations mentioned in the novel in a similar order to browsing through the book, with links to the locations (on Google Maps), allowing you to take a "self-guided" walking tour simply by using your smartphone with one connected to a mobile data network (check availability in Ouro Preto with your operator).
The content is on one of my pages [here] available with exclusive access for subscribers.
At the end of this article there is a link where you can purchase a subscription [or click here] and after signing you will see that in the menu (at the top of the website) there is the link through which you can access the content of the “Dirceu and Marília” tour. You can find the same link on the homepage of my website, it's that simple.
With that, I hope you have a great experience in Ouro Preto and if you want to delve even deeper into the incredible stories and places of our city, rent one of my guided hikeswhere I will actually accompany you to other interesting places and many other stories, Sueli. Subscribe and learn more about this innovation.