The Most Beautiful Churches in Brazil
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful churches in Brazil are São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador, Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha) and Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos. The list covers 6 churches. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Brazil's finest churches belong to the colonial centuries, when Portuguese Baroque crossed the Atlantic and took on a life of its own. Sugar wealth paid for richly decorated churches in the coastal cities of the northeast, and the eighteenth-century gold rush in Minas Gerais funded a second flowering in the mountain towns, where local artists, many of them of mixed African and European descent, developed a lighter, more sculptural Rococo. Gilded woodwork, blue-and-white tiles and carved soapstone became the signatures of Brazilian sacred art.
In Salvador, the São Francisco Church and Convent is famous for an interior almost entirely covered in carved and gilded wood, with azulejo panels in the cloister. In Recife, the Capela Dourada, the Golden Chapel of the Franciscan Third Order, is a smaller but equally dazzling space of gilded carving and painted panels from the late seventeenth century.
In Minas Gerais the protagonist is Aleijadinho, the sculptor and architect Antônio Francisco Lisboa. He designed the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Ouro Preto, with its round towers and carved soapstone portal, while the painter Manuel da Costa Ataíde filled its nave ceiling with an illusionistic heaven. At the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas, Aleijadinho carved twelve soapstone prophets that stand on the terraces before the church, and life-size cedar figures of the Passion in the chapels below.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador | Church building | |
| 2 | Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha) | Church building | |
| 3 | Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos | Church building | ✓ |
| 4 | Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Ouro Preto) | Church building | |
| 5 | Capela Dourada | Church building | |
| 6 | Mother Church of Saint Anthony, Tiradentes | Church building |
01 São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador
Igreja e Convento de São Francisco
Brazil · 3 km from Salvador12.975° S 38.509° W
Wellington Da Costa Gomez · CC BY-SA 4.0 What makes São Francisco especially rewarding is the blue-and-white tilework. Lisbon azulejo panels by Bartolomeu Antunes de Jesus line the lower walls of the chancel and transept with scenes from the life of Saint Francis. The two-storey cloister, built between 1707 and 1752, is wrapped in thirty-seven great tile panels installed in the 1740s — not saints but moral allegories after the Roman poet Horace, drawn from an emblem book by the Flemish painter Otto van Veen, each with a Latin motto beneath, full of pagan gods, soldiers, putti, animals and European buildings. The ceiling of the entrance hall is an illusionistic painting by José Joaquim da Rocha of 1774.
Did you know? Portuguese tiles and lioz marble crossed the Atlantic as ballast in the holds of ships bound for Brazil.
02 Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha)
Igreja São Francisco de Assis
Brazil · 8.9 km from Belo Horizonte19.858° S 43.979° W
Bernardo Gouvêa · CC BY-SA 3.0 The building was finished in 1943, but the archdiocese, under Archbishop Antonio dos Santos Cabral, refused to accept it, objecting both to its unconventional form and to Portinari's art. For fourteen years it could not be used for Catholic worship and was only consecrated in April 1959. Recognition outside the church came sooner: it is considered the first modern building in Brazil to be listed as an architectural monument, and in July 2016 it became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble.
Did you know? The archbishop declared the building unfit for worship, and a later official even tried to have it condemned and demolished.
03 Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos
Santuário do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos
Brazil · 19.4 km from Conselheiro Lafaiete20.508° S 43.861° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by bea_marques from Pixabay Below the terrace, six small chapels line the slope and hold the Stations of the Passion: 66 life-size figures in carved and painted wood, on which Aleijadinho's workshop was recorded at work from 1796, with painting completed over the following decades by artists including Mestre Ataíde. Inside the church, the Room of Miracles preserves generations of ex-votos left by pilgrims. The sanctuary was protected as national heritage in 1939, made a minor basilica in 1957 and inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1985.
Did you know? The hillside follows the European sacro monte model, and the path between the chapels zigzags so that pilgrims feel the effort of Christ's climb.
04 Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Ouro Preto)
Igreja de São Francisco de Assis (Ouro Preto)
Brazil20.387° S 43.503° W
Sarah and Iain · CC BY 2.0 Inside, the carved and gilded woodwork, statues and high reliefs follow Aleijadinho's designs, though the work dragged on long after his death and was only finished towards the end of the nineteenth century. Then look up. The wooden nave ceiling carries the masterpiece of Manuel da Costa Ataíde, Ouro Preto's great painter: the Glorification of Our Lady among Musician Angels, an illusionistic sky in which the Virgin floats among angels playing instruments, framed by painted columns, balconies, bishops and saints. The architecture of the real church seems to continue upward into the painted one.
Did you know? Art historian Germain Bazin considered the oval relief medallion on the facade to be Aleijadinho's masterpiece.
05 Capela Dourada
Brazil · 3.5 km from Recife8.062° S 34.877° W
Wilfredor · CC0 Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, lies where the Capibaribe and Beberibe rivers reach the Atlantic; its islands and dozens of bridges have earned it the name "Venice of Brazil". First recorded in 1537, it was for a time the capital of Dutch Brazil until the Portuguese retook it in 1654. The chapel stands in the old core of the city, within a Franciscan complex that also includes the church of the Third Order and a museum of sacred art.
Did you know? The chapel was built because the lay brothers of the Third Order were wealthy enough to give their novices a chapel of their own.
06 Mother Church of Saint Anthony, Tiradentes
Igreja Matriz de Santo Antônio
Brazil · 7.8 km from São João del Rei21.110° S 44.178° W
Ricardo André Frantz · CC BY 3.0 Tiradentes grew out of a village founded in 1702 during the Minas Gerais gold rush and became a town in 1718 as Vila de São José do Rio das Mortes. In 1889 it was renamed in honour of Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes, the hero of the independence movement who was born nearby. Its cobbled streets and whitewashed houses make it one of the best-preserved examples of Portuguese colonial architecture in Brazil.
Did you know? The clocks in its two towers were installed in 1788 and still keep time today.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful churches in Brazil?
- On our list, São Francisco Church and Convent, Salvador ranks first, followed by Church of Saint Francis of Assisi (Pampulha) and Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos.
- Who was Aleijadinho?
- Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho, was an eighteenth-century sculptor and architect from Minas Gerais, regarded as the greatest artist of Brazilian colonial Baroque. His best-known works are in Ouro Preto and Congonhas.
- Why are Brazilian Baroque churches so richly gilded?
- Much of the decoration dates from the eighteenth century, when gold discovered in Minas Gerais brought great wealth to the colony. Religious brotherhoods competed to adorn their churches, and gilded carved wood became the dominant style.
- What are the prophets of Congonhas?
- They are twelve life-size statues of Old Testament prophets carved in soapstone by Aleijadinho for the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos. The sanctuary is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- How many churches are on this list in Brazil?
- The list covers 6 churches.