Barras, Piauí

Barras is a municipality in the state of Piauí in the Northeast region of Brazil.

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Coordinates: 4°14′49″S 42°17′45″W / 4.24694°S 42.2958°W / -4.24694; -42.2958

Piau

Piau is a municipality in the state of Minas Gerais in the Southeast region of Brazil.

History

At the end of the eighteenth century, those who had been involved in the Inconfidência Mineira were heavily persecuted by the Portuguese Crown. These men (among them was Francisco José da Silva, uncle of Tiradentes) became fugitives searching for new places to make a new life.

The place they found was set in a vast forest by a river which rises in the Serra da Mantiqueira. The settlers gave this river the name of Rio Piau because of a large amount of fish of this species (leporinus piau?).

The first chapel was built in honour of the Holy Spirit, and the town was named Divino Espírito Santo de Piau. In place of the old chapel there is now the parish church of the Holy Spirit considered one of the most beautiful churches in the Zona da Mata.

The District was created on July 22, 1868. belonging to the municipalities of Ouro Preto, Barbacena, Mar de Espanha, Rio Pomba, Juiz de Fora, São João Nepomuceno and Rio Novo. On December 12, 1953 Piau became a municipality in its own right.

Piauí

Piauí (Portuguese pronunciation: [piawˈwi]) is one of the states of Brazil, located in the country's Northeast Region.

Piauí has the shortest coastline of any of the non-landlocked Brazilian states at 66 km (41 mi), and the capital, Teresina, is the only state capital in the northeast to be located inland. The reason for this is, unlike the rest of the area, Piauí was first colonised inland and slowly expanded towards the ocean, rather than the other way around. In the southeast of the state, the National Park of Serra da Capivara is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park has more than 400 archaeological sites and the largest concentration of rock paintings in the world, in a landscape dominated by canyons and caatinga.

History

The state has many notable archaeological sites, including Serra de Capivara National Park and Sete Cidades National Park, which are rich in remains of prehistoric Paleo-Indian and sedentary-based Indigenous Brazilian complex cultures.

Early settlers in the region included Domingos Jorge Velho, from São Paulo state, who brought the first herds of cattle to the area; and Domingos Afonso Mafrense, from Portugal, who founded what is today Oeiras.