Gruta do Janelão
Interesting facts
- Janelão's record stalactite, about 28 metres long, is nicknamed Perna da Bailarina, the Ballerina's Leg, for its long and slender shape.
- It is often described as the longest free-hanging stalactite in the world, dangling from the roof without touching the floor.
- The cave's entrance portal is about 100 metres high, and some of its galleries exceed 100 metres in both height and width.
- Two giant collapse sinkholes along the cave, each more than 100 metres wide and deep, are what let daylight and forest inside.
- In the northern sinkhole the rock walls rise about 150 metres from the cave floor to the plateau above.
- Rimstone pools inside the cave are stained red by iron oxide, adding colour to the grey limestone.
- Near the entrance, the Ateliê Janelão rock art shows animals, geometric patterns and parallel lines painted in red, black and ochre.
- In the nearby Lapa dos Desenhos, paintings have been dated to around 9,000 years ago, with traces of human visits reaching back about 12,000 years.
- The park protecting the cave was created in 1999, but Janelão opened to visitors only in July 2014 after a year of trail building.
- The Peruaçu valley is home to Trichomycterus itacarambiensis, a small catfish found nowhere else on Earth.
Why it is worth it
Gruta do Janelão is a cave where the forest grows indoors. Over a stretch of roughly 3.5 km its roof has collapsed in places into enormous openings, so that shafts of daylight fall onto the cave floor and trees have taken root inside the gallery, rising toward the light between walls of grey limestone. The Peruaçu River flows through the cave beneath them. The name means "big window", and the giant skylights — framing patches of sky high above the river — are what give the place its uncanny, cathedral-like character.
It is the largest cave in the Peruaçu valley, with a horizontal development of about 4,740 metres and a vertical range of some 176 metres. Among its formations is a stalactite around 28 metres long, often cited as the largest ever recorded. Where light reaches the floor, mosses, ferns and trees have formed small, carefully balanced gardens of vegetation that seem out of place underground, while outside the cave the forest of the valley reaches heights of up to 60 metres.
Janelão is the centrepiece of Cavernas do Peruaçu National Park, created in 1999 to protect some 56,448 hectares of karst country in the north of Minas Gerais, across the municipalities of Januária, Itacarambi and São João das Missões. The park lies in the transition between the Cerrado savanna and the dry Caatinga, and its caves, canyons and sinkholes — such as the Dolina dos Macacos — are matched by an exceptional archaeological record: rock paintings in Janelão and neighbouring caves date back more than 10,000 years. In 2025 the park was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for its natural beauty and its geological significance. The Peruaçu itself runs on to join the São Francisco River at the park's southeastern edge.
Getting there
The cave lies about 16 km from the town of Itacarambi, in northern Minas Gerais. The nearest airport is Montes Claros Airport (MOC), about 182 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Gruta do Janelão (MG-199) is a limestone cave located inside the Cavernas do Peruaçu National Park, in the municipality of Januária, Minas Gerais, Brazil. This cave is the largest in the valley, totaling 4,740 m of horizontal extension and elevation of 176m. Because it has several skylights letting the sun in, small forests that resemble Japanese gardens by the delicacy and harmony are formed everywhere, all by the banks of the Peruaçu River which runs through the Janelão grotto. It has the largest stalactite already registered measuring 28 meters long.
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