Curitiba

Curitiba is the capital of Paraná, Brazil. If you're heading for Iguaçu Falls from Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, it's worth stopping by for a day or two.

Curitiba is the largest cities in the prosperous South region, and its population is largely descended from German and Polish immigrants. The city is known to urban planners worldwide for its innovative public transit system.

Get in

By bus

Curitiba is about 6 hours by coach from São Paulo.

By plane

Curitiba is one of the major cities of Brazil, and you should have no difficulty getting a plane from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or other major cities. Flights to Foz do Iguaçu usually have connections in Curitiba anyways.

See

• Rua 24 Horas is a covered shopping arcade which is, as you might guess, open twenty-four hours a day.
• Bosque do Papa, built in 1980 to commemorate Pope John Paul II's visit, is a wooded park dedicated to the early Polish immigrants to Curitiba.
• Rua das Flores, a nice area for shopping, it is a pedestrian-only street.
• Ópera de Arame is a theater made completely out of wire mesh, an interesting sight to see.
• Jardim Botânico is a famous botanical park comprised of gardens, fountains, and a large domed greenhouse.

Get out

The train to the coastal town Paranaguá makes an excellent day trip. The ride descends through some of last remaining Atlantic rainforest.

This text of this article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0. It has been slightly modified to fit the general design of this website. The authors of this document are Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel, Emily, Paul N. Richter and the following WikiTravel users: Nzpcmad, Jonboy. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Curitiba.