Three days in Curitiba: the city urban planners fly in to look at

Two nights in the Parana capital: the old town on the first evening, a day of Niemeyer, glasshouses and an opera house made of tubes, and an Italian lunch or a Sunday market before the plane.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Curitiba
Places
8 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

In the 1970s Curitiba started doing things other cities were not. It pedestrianised its main street over a weekend before anybody could object, put express buses in dedicated lanes with tube-shaped stations you pay to enter, and turned flood plains into parks instead of draining them. Half the bus systems in the world copied the result, and planners still come here to look at it.

That reputation makes it sound like homework. It is not. This is a cool, green, tidy, low-rise city at 930 metres, settled by Poles, Ukrainians, Germans and Italians who each left a neighbourhood behind, with a colonial old town at the middle and a ring of parks around it, and it is one of the easiest places in Brazil to spend a couple of days.

Two nights covers it. Most people come through on the way to Iguacu Falls or down to the coast, and it is worth stopping rather than connecting.

Highlights

  • The Oscar Niemeyer Museum, with a giant concrete eye raised on a yellow stalk outside it
  • The botanical garden glasshouse, an art nouveau frame of iron and glass over a formal French parterre
  • An opera house built of steel tubes inside a flooded quarry, put up in seventy five days
  • Sunday morning at the Largo da Ordem craft fair, which fills the whole old town
  • Lunch in Santa Felicidade, where the Italian restaurants serve until nobody can move

Where to stay

Curitiba

The old town sits on a low rise at the northern edge of the centre, a handful of cobbled streets around a ruined church, and the modern city spreads out from it in a low-rise grid with green wedges pushed into it. The museums and parks are scattered on the northern and eastern sides, none of them more than twenty minutes away.

Two nights gives an evening to the historic quarter, a full day to the buildings and gardens that made the city famous, and a last morning for either the Italian quarter or, if it falls on a Sunday, the craft fair that takes over the old town.

Day by day

Day 1 in Curitiba

The old town, and a street that never closes

Curitiba is over three hundred years old, which surprises people who arrive expecting a planning exhibit. The Largo da Ordem quarter at the top of the centre is the surviving piece: cobbles, whitewashed colonial houses, a stone church ruin, and bars that fill up on a Friday.

Walk up to it through the pedestrian streets. Rua XV de Novembro was closed to cars over a weekend in 1972 by a mayor who knew the shopkeepers would sue on the Monday and had children painting pictures in the road by the time they got there. It is still pedestrian and still the main street.

Finish on the glass arcade a couple of blocks away, which is open at every hour and exists mostly to prove a point about what a street can be.

  1. 15:30

    Tiradentes Square

    Visit

    The city's founding square and the way into the old town, with the cathedral on one side and the pedestrian streets running off it. Small, and the point is what surrounds it rather than the square itself.

  2. 16:30

    São Francisco Ruins

    Visit

    The stone shell of a church begun in the eighteenth century and never finished, standing in the middle of the old quarter with a garden around it. Ten minutes to look at, and the bars and restaurants on the cobbles either side are the reason to be here in the evening.

  3. 17:30

    24 Horas Street

    Visit

    A glass and steel arcade 120 metres long with a clock at each end showing 24 hours, built so that there would be somewhere open at four in the morning. More monument than shopping street these days, and a genuine local landmark.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner in the old town

    Eat

    The cobbled streets around the ruin have most of the city's atmospheric restaurants and bars, and several serve barreado, the coastal beef stew, which is worth ordering once. Busiest Thursday to Saturday.

With more time: The Paiol theatre, a round brick building that was a gunpowder store until the city turned it into a stage in 1971, is a ten minute walk east and started the whole habit of reusing buildings here. The first public park in the city, laid out in 1886 with a lake and an iron gate copied from a Paris cemetery, is closer still and good for half an hour.

Day 2 in Curitiba

A glasshouse, a concrete eye and an opera house made of tubes

One day covers everything Curitiba is famous for, and it works in a loop: the botanical garden east of the centre first thing, then north to the museum and the quarry.

The glasshouse is the image on every postcard of this city, an iron and glass frame in the art nouveau manner with a formal parterre laid out in front of it. Go early, when the light is low and the coach parties have not arrived.

Then the two buildings that show what the city does with concrete. One is a Niemeyer school building with a giant eye added on a stalk in front of it. The other is a concert hall of steel tubes and clear panels standing in a flooded quarry, reached across a footbridge, and it is one of the more startling things in Brazil.

  1. 09:00

    Botanical Garden of Curitiba

    Other

    A French-style formal garden with flower beds laid out in patterns, and a three-domed glasshouse of iron and glass at the top of it holding the tropical collection. Free, open early, and the walk in the woods behind is a good deal quieter than the front lawn.

  2. 11:30

    Oscar Niemeyer Museum

    Culture

    Oscar Niemeyer converted a school he had designed in the 1960s and then, at ninety five, added the eye: a vast lens-shaped hall on a yellow concrete stalk with a ramp running up inside it. Design, architecture and modern Brazilian art in the galleries below.

  3. 13:45

    Lunch near the museum

    Eat

    The Centro Civico district around the museum has cafes and by-weight buffets aimed at office workers, which are fast and cheap. Anywhere with a queue at half past twelve is fine.

  4. 15:30

    Ópera de Arame/Pedreiras Park

    Visit

    A concert hall of tubular steel and clear roof panels standing in the water of a disused granite quarry, built in seventy five days in 1992 and reached across a footbridge. The quarry next to it is an open-air amphitheatre. Go late in the day when the lights come on.

With more time: The two big parks on this side of town, one built round a lake with capybaras in it and one full of araucaria pines, are both free and both worth an hour if the weather is good. The Japanese square, laid out for the Japanese immigrant community with a tea house and a portal, is on the way back into the centre.

Day 3 in Curitiba

The Sunday fair, and the long Italian lunch

The last morning depends a little on the day of the week.

If it is a Sunday, stay in the centre first. From early morning the whole old town fills with a craft market running down the cobbled streets and into the squares: woodwork, food stalls, live music, and half the city walking through it. It is the best morning of the week here.

Then, whatever day it is, go northwest to Santa Felicidade and have the long Italian lunch that Curitiba does better than anywhere in Brazil. The airport is on the other side of town, so leave time.

  1. 09:00

    Feira do Largo da Ordem

    Other

    A craft and food fair that has run on Sunday mornings since the 1970s, filling the old town's cobbled streets from about nine until two. Woodwork, ceramics, street food and buskers, and far more locals than visitors.

  2. 12:00

    Santa Felicidade

    Landmark

    The neighbourhood settled by families from the Veneto in the 1870s, now a strip of enormous restaurants with vine arbours and wine cellars. The fixed-price meal is polenta, pasta, roast chicken and sausage brought round until you stop them. Go hungry and do not plan anything afterwards.

With more time: With a late flight, the memorial to Ukrainian immigration in one of the northern parks reconstructs a wooden church and is unlike anything else in the country. The 360 degree viewing platform on the telecoms tower northwest of the centre is a quick stop and puts the city's layout in context better than a map does.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Afonso Pena airport is 18 km southeast of the centre with flights from across Brazil and a few international routes, and an airport bus runs into town. Long distance coaches use the terminal beside the railway station, which is the way most Brazilians arrive from Sao Paulo, six hours north.

The bus network is the thing the city is known for and it is genuinely good: express services run in their own lanes with priority at lights, and you board at street level from glass tube stations after paying at the door. One flat fare covers the whole system including transfers. Ask for the Linha Turismo, a circular sightseeing route that stops at almost every sight in the city and lets you get off and on a few times on one ticket.

The historic centre is small and entirely walkable. Everything else is a short bus or car ride, and ride-hailing is cheap.

When to go

Curitiba is the coldest of Brazil's big cities and people forget that. It sits on a plateau near the Tropic of Capricorn and winter mornings from June to August drop close to freezing, with a grey drizzle the locals call garoa. Bring a jacket whatever the rest of your Brazil itinerary says.

Summer, December to March, is warm rather than hot, in the high twenties, with heavy afternoon rain. Spring, September to November, is the pick: mild, flowering, and dry enough.

Rain is possible in any month, so the indoor half of the plan, the museums and the glasshouse, is worth keeping in reserve for a wet morning.

The train down to the coast

The best day out from Curitiba is not in Curitiba. A railway built in the 1880s drops off the plateau to the coastal plain through the Serra do Mar, across viaducts and along ledges cut into the escarpment, and it is one of the most spectacular rail journeys in South America.

Trains run most mornings and take about four hours down, with the return either by train or by bus. Sit on the left going down. Book ahead at weekends and in the summer holidays, and check the forecast, because in cloud you see nothing at all.

That eats a whole day, so it turns two nights here into three. It is worth it.

Eating

Curitiba eats like southern Europe because that is who settled it. Santa Felicidade, on the northwestern edge, was founded by families from the Veneto and its restaurants still serve the same enormous fixed-price meal: polenta, pasta, chicken, sausage, salad, brought round until you surrender.

In the centre the Polish and Ukrainian legacy shows up in pierogi and in beetroot, and there is a strong bakery culture. Barreado, a beef stew cooked for hours in a sealed clay pot and eaten with cassava flour and banana, comes up from the coast and is the regional dish worth going out of your way for.

The city also brews properly. Independent breweries are thick on the ground here and most bars carry them.

Where to stay

The centre is the obvious base: hotels at every price around Rua XV de Novembro and the old town, walking distance to the historic quarter and on the bus routes to everything else. It is busy by day and quieter at night than you might expect, and it is safe enough with the usual city sense.

Batel, southwest of the middle, is the smart neighbourhood with the better restaurants and a short ride into town. Anywhere near the bus and rail terminal is convenient and scruffy.

What sticks about Curitiba is not any one building. It is that the buses work, the parks are full on a Tuesday, the main street belongs to people rather than cars, and none of that happened by accident.

Give it two nights on the way somewhere else, and add a third for the train down the mountain if the forecast is clear.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Curitiba worth a stop?
Yes, for two nights rather than a week. It is the tidiest and easiest of Brazil's big cities, it has two or three genuinely striking buildings, and it is the natural break on the way between Sao Paulo, Iguacu and the south. It is not a beach or a party town and does not pretend to be.
How many days do you need in Curitiba?
Two nights for the city itself. Three if you want to take the mountain railway down to the coast, which is a full day and is the single best thing you can do from here.
How do you get around?
On foot in the centre and by bus everywhere else. The express network runs in dedicated lanes from tube-shaped stations, and there is a circular tourist route that covers most of the sights on one ticket. Ride-hailing is cheap if the timetable does not suit.
Is Curitiba cold?
By Brazilian standards, yes. It sits at 930 metres and winter nights from June to August can approach freezing, with grey drizzle for days. Pack a jacket even if the rest of your trip is tropical.
Curitiba or Florianopolis?
Different trips entirely. Florianopolis is beaches and an island; Curitiba is architecture, parks and food, with a mountain railway attached. They are four hours apart by road and pair well if you have a week in the south.