This church was built 1734- 1785 for the Confraternity of the Rosary. This served local black persons, free or slave. Originally they had met at the Igreja Matrtiz de Nossa Senhora da Conceicao de Antonio Dias. AS the town grew they decided to build their own church and this became Santa Efigenia. A freed slave Chico Rei and his comrades built it with gold extracted from the Encardideira mine. Legend says that some slaves hid the gold in their hair and washed it out in the church and used it for church purposes.
The plan of the church is a rectangle with no aisles along the nave. The facade differs from many in the town and has a semicircular cornice above the central window and there is a niche above the door containing the soapstone statue of Our Lady of the Rosary, by Aleijandindo. Manuel Francisco Lisbao, Aleijadinho's father supplied the wood for the construction and supervised carvings in the church by Francisco Xavier de Brito. The carving shows signs of black African practice especiall on the main altar with imagets of shells, snails, and horns. The ceiling is painted and images include the Four Doctors of the Church and a black Pope. The
The church was closed in 2008 for 6 years for major restoration.
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