The beginning of the city's Pilot Plan

The new capital represented the country of the future: its conception was carefully thought out to signify hope and modernity without, however, abandoning traditional values. Even the date for its inauguration was fraught with meaning. It was on April 21st that Tiradentes, a Brazilian national hero who had fought in the last quarter of the eighteenth century for the independence of this country from Portugal, was hanged. It is also the date of the legendary founding of Rome.