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Joinville is the largest city of Santa Catarina, Brazil, set between the Serra do Mar and Babitonga Bay and famous as the City of Dance and the City of Flowers, home of the Joinville Dance Festival and the only Bolshoi Theatre school outside Russia. Its top sights are the Rua das Palmeiras, the immigration museum, the Immigrant Cemetery and the old railway station.
The city was founded in 1851 as Colônia Dona Francisca by Swiss, German and Norwegian settlers, on land given as a dowry when Princess Francisca, sister of Emperor Pedro II, married the French Prince of Joinville in 1843. Between 1850 and 1888 some 17,400 immigrants arrived, most of them German, and their houses, palms and cemetery still shape the centre.
Today Joinville is the most populous city in Santa Catarina, with more than 600,000 people, and the state's largest metalworking centre. Beyond the centre lie the forest trail up Monte Crista and the island town of São Francisco do Sul, the oldest in Santa Catarina.
Rua das Palmeiras, officially Alameda Brüstlein, is the palm-lined avenue in the centre of Joinville that leads to the old Maison de Joinville. Its imperial palms grew from seeds brought from Rio de Janeiro's Botanical Garden in 1867 and planted in 1871 to 1873, and it was listed by IPHAN in 2005.
Museu Nacional de Imigração e Colonização in Joinville occupies the Palácio dos Príncipes, completed in 1870 to run the Prince of Joinville's estate and the Colônia Dona Francisca. Created by federal law in 1957, it tells the story of immigrant rural and urban life in southern Brazil.
Cemitério do Imigrante in Joinville is the old Protestant cemetery of the Colônia Dona Francisca, used from December 1851 until 1913 and listed by IPHAN since 1962. Its 490 graves hold more than 2,000 settlers and descendants, and the gravedigger's old house is now the Casa da Memória.
Estação da Memória is the old Joinville railway station, opened in August 1906 and built in a German-Brazilian style, now protected at municipal, state and federal level. Reopened in 2008 as a heritage and culture centre, it hosts a monthly Saturday flea market, art and craft fair.
The Joinville Dance Festival, held every July in Joinville since 1983, is listed by Guinness World Records as the world's largest dance event by number of participants, with about 4,500 dancers. Lasting around two weeks, it fills the city with competitions, open stages and street performances.
The Bolshoi Theatre School in Brazil, in Joinville, is a ballet school founded on 15 March 2000 as the only branch of Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre. Russian and Brazilian teachers train its students in the Vaganova method, with free tuition, meals, transport and health care.
Museu de Arte de Joinville opened in 1976 in the Casarão Doerffel, the house of the German immigrant Ottokar Doerffel, founder of the city's first newspaper. Begun in 1854 and ten years in the building, the house is one of Joinville's oldest masonry buildings and now shows local art.
Museu Arqueológico de Sambaqui de Joinville tells the story of the coast's first hunter-gatherers, the builders of the shell mounds called sambaquis. It grew from the more than 12,000 pieces collected by Guilherme Tiburtius, bought by the city in 1963, and opened in 1969.
São Francisco do Sul is the oldest town in Santa Catarina, on an island at the mouth of Babitonga Bay near Joinville, where the French expedition of Binot Paulmier de Gonneville is said to have landed in January 1504. Every 11 August it serves as the symbolic state capital for a day.
Museu Nacional do Mar, in São Francisco do Sul near Joinville, is a museum of Brazilian boats created in 1993 in the old Hoepcke company warehouses. Its 15 themed rooms hold more than 60 full-size vessels, from jangadas and saveiros to whaleboats, plus about 200 models and craft pieces.
Monte Crista is a granite peak of about 927 m in Garuva, near Joinville, in the foothills of the Serra do Mar. Hikers follow an ancient stone stairway through the Atlantic Forest past waterfalls and cold pools to views over Joinville, Itapoá and the island of São Francisco do Sul.
Babitonga Bay is the 153.7 km2 bay beside Joinville, framed by Araquari, Itapoá and the island of São Francisco do Sul, and the largest estuary complex of Santa Catarina with the state's largest mangroves. Shell-mound builders lived on its shores more than 3,000 years ago.
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