Where to Stay in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul

What is Porto Alegre known for?

Porto Alegre runs Rio Grande do Sul from the bank of the Guaíba, and the city is candid about being somewhere people pass through on the way to the Serras Gaúchas rather than a destination stacked with sights of its own. Its museums are the exception. The Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art, the Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul, and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Rio Grande do Sul hold the state's collections between them.

Farol Santander marks the waterfront.

What are the main landmarks in Porto Alegre?

Farol Santander stands over the waterfront. State collections gather in the centre, among them the Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art, the Júlio de Castilhos Museum, the Museu de Porto Alegre Joaquim Felizardo and the Pinacoteca Barão de Santo Ângelo. Churches are older ground.

The Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Our Lady of Sorrows Church and the Positivist temple set out three lines of belief inside one city, while the Monument to Brazilian Literature and Afluentes do Guaíba take the civic side.

What is the history of Porto Alegre?

Porto Alegre dates from 1772. Settlement took the bank of the Guaíba, and a port is what the name announces, which fits a place put where the water carried the traffic of the southern end of the country. Government followed.

The Antigo Palácio do Governo, still known as Forte Apache, held the administration of Rio Grande do Sul before the present buildings, and the Ponte de Pedra keeps the name of the stone bridge it is. Institutions concentrated here as the state grew. The Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Rio Grande do Sul, the Júlio de Castilhos Museum and the Museu de Comunicação Social Hipólito José da Costa each hold a strand of the record, running from geography through statecraft to the press.

Military history keeps its own addresses. The Museu da Brigada Militar and the Museu do Comando Militar do Sul preserve the account of the force and the command, while the Monumento ao Expedicionário stands for the soldiers sent out from here. A Positivist temple survives too, an unusual thing for any capital to keep.

Godoy House and the Capela Senhor dos Passos da Santa Casa de Misericórdia belong to the older city that the rest of this grew around, and the Museu da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul carries the academic layer.

Where is Porto Alegre?

Porto Alegre stands on the Guaíba in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil, and no state capital in the country sits further south. The municipality covers a little under five hundred square kilometres, compact for the centre of one of Brazil's largest metropolitan regions. Water is on one side.

The Serras Gaúchas begin inland, which is why so many trips through the capital turn out to be trips to somewhere else.

What is the climate of Porto Alegre?

Seasons here are distinct. Porto Alegre is the southernmost capital in Brazil, far enough down the map that winter is a season in its own right rather than a cooler pause between summers. The Guaíba adds humidity.

Air off that water reaches the low ground along the shore, and the subtropical band the city belongs to delivers real heat in the warm months without the constancy the north of the country lives with.

How do you get to Porto Alegre?

Most trips into Rio Grande do Sul start here. Porto Alegre is the state capital and the usual entry point for the Serras Gaúchas, so arrivals often move straight on rather than staying long enough to look around the city itself. The metropolitan region spreads wide.

Central addresses are the ones worth a stop, with Farol Santander, the Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul and the Ponte de Pedra within a short radius of one another.