Mine closure in Ouro Preto: the remnants of the 18th century gold rush and the tourism as an economic opportunity

Abstract Mine closure is the set of all activities that follow the end of the productive phase of a mine, characterizing itself as the process of returning an area transformed by mining into a new condition of sustainability, considering the potential future and the best possible reclamation of the area impacted. However, such an understanding was not conceivable during the Colonial Period, a time when gold mining took place in the Ouro Preto Hill, among others, and nearly 200 years after the end of the gold rush, negative and positive impacts are revealed by the human interaction and the urba...