Pinhais

About Pinhais

Clay and railways built Pinhais. The Curitiba to Paranaguá railway arrived in 1885, settlers gathered around the station, and in 1912 Guilherme Weiss took over a local pottery and turned it into a large ceramics works whose workers' families shaped the young town. For most of the 20th century it was part of Piraquara, until it was separated in 1992 and became its own municipality on 1 January 1993.

Today Pinhais is a city of about 130,000 people on the eastern edge of Curitiba, small in area but busy with industry, shopping and the Expotrade exhibition centre. What sets it apart is water and green space: former sand pits along the rivers have been turned into the large Parque das Águas, and the Iraí reservoir on the city's edge supplies drinking water to around a million people in the region.

Add the hands-on pavilions of the Parque da Ciência Newton Freire Maia, the forest trails of the Bosque Municipal and the culture centre in the city centre, and Pinhais makes a relaxed day out from Curitiba.