According to the locals, it's the bar capital of the world, with more than 12, catering for the five million citizens of Brazil's third city. Others will recall Belo Horizonte as the scene of England's most humiliating football defeat, when a hearse driver and teacher from the US stunned the national team at the World Cup.
But if the 5, or so English ticket holders expected here for England's final group game against Costa Rica in a few weeks' time look a little more closely, they may remember it for something else. As is the case across Brazil, peer behind the mask and another reality stares back at you.
In downtown Belo Horizonte are 23 brothels, known locally as zonas. They are hidden up narrow staircases between shops in the grim city centre, a place so grey, in parts, that you could be in the old Soviet Union except for the scorching sun above.
All the while, tucked away at the back of an indoor car-park, is Aprosmig β a union for those within the industry in the state of Minas Gerais the name is a contraction of the "Minas Gerais association of prostitutes". It's normal for foreign guys to look for them, they always do, and now there'll be more foreign guys.
They'll do very well. Inside, pasted to a grubby wall are erotic photographs and charts of the body, notes about diseases, numbers for doctors and timetables for psychology sessions.
