A first-time guide to Curitiba, Brazil

30.07.2024 - 22:00 / lonelyplanet.com

Jul 30, 2024 • 8 min read

Brazil’s showcase “green” city, Curitiba (pronounced kr-uh-CHEE-buh) has long drawn kudos for its commitment to mass transit and innovative urban planning, much of it dating from the 1970s. 

As the nation’s eighth-largest city, it’s also a surprisingly diverse place, with residents claiming Polish, Italian, Jewish and Japanese heritage. Although rarely touted as a tourist city per se, Curitiba merits an elongated visit for its parks, architecture and pioneering attempts to nurture genuine sustainability. Center stage is a necklace of clean, well-kept green spaces, with the centerpiece a truly elegant botanic garden. In between all the greenery, a small historic downtown district boasts handsome art nouveau and neoclassical buildings among the countless monolithic high-rises.

Curitiba is also an ideal base camp for exploring a rich hinterland. Monumental sandstone rock formations lie to the west, while coastal rainforest and surfing beaches await in the east.

Here’s everything a first-time visitor to Curitiba needs to know.

Curitiba enjoys a spring-like climate all year long – which means that you’ll never find the stifling heat and mountain chill experienced in other parts of South America here.

Pleasant warmth and manageable amounts of rain make February and March the best months to visit. This also coincides with the city’s relatively modest (by Brazilian standards) carnival, a moveable feast that usually falls sometime in mid-to-late February.

Simply put, there’s no undesirable season to visit Curitiba. While it rains slightly more in summer (December to March), it’s a little cooler and drier in the winter (June to August). Retreating cold and mugginess in August makes for comfortable days. For cheaper hotel prices, consider the shoulder months of May and September.    

While Curitiba is commonly used as a staging post by travelers heading elsewhere, you could easily spend three days exploring the city and its environs.

Spend day one using the city’s celebrated public transport system to visit headliner sights such as the botanical gardens and the Oscar Niemeyer Museum.

Devote day two to a ride on the Serra Verde Express, one of the world’s most fabulous train journeys. The 10-hour round-trip includes a lunch stop in Morretes.

On day three, consider taking a bus west to Vila Velha State Park, returning to the city in the evening for dinner at deluxe Restaurante Manu.

Curitiba’s Aeroporto Internacional Afonso Pena, 18km (11 miles) southeast of the center, is large and modern, offering regular connections to cities throughout Brazil as well as to Argentina and Chile.

The combined long-distance bus and train station forms a single three-block complex called the rodoferroviária, which sits