Current Time in Pelotas, Brazil

Pelotas is a city in the far south of Brazil, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, standing on the São Gonçalo channel that links the enormous Lagoa dos Patos with the Lagoa Mirim. The surrounding country is flat, wet and green, a landscape of rice fields, cattle pasture and marsh, and the Atlantic coast lies a short distance to the east. Winters here are genuinely cold by Brazilian standards, with frost and long grey drizzle.

The population is around three hundred and forty thousand, making Pelotas the third largest city in the state. Its economy is based on rice and soya, dairy and fruit production, food processing, a river port and, increasingly, on education and health services that draw people from the whole southern region.

The city owes its origins and its architecture to charque, the salted and dried beef that fed plantation workers across Brazil. From the late eighteenth century, processing works known as charqueadas were established along the river, using enslaved labour on a large scale, and the trade generated immense wealth. The owners built themselves neoclassical mansions in the town centre, imported French tiles, Italian marble and English ironwork, and endowed theatres, clubs and a public library. Pelotas became one of the most refined cities in southern Brazil during the nineteenth century. The abolition of slavery and the arrival of refrigeration ended the charque economy, leaving behind an architectural inheritance far grander than the modern city's size would suggest.

That inheritance is the main attraction. The Praça Coronel Pedro Osório is ringed by restored nineteenth-century buildings, including the Grande Hotel, the Bibliotheca Pública and the Casa Barão de Butuí, and the Teatro Guarany and Teatro Sete de Abril are among the oldest working theatres in the country. Several charqueada estates outside the city are open to visitors and give a frank account of the slave labour on which the fortune was built. The nearby beaches on the lagoon at Laranjal, the Taim wildlife reserve and the historic port town of Rio Grande add further interest.

Pelotas is famous throughout Brazil for its sweets. The convent-derived confections made with egg yolks and sugar, brought by settlers from the Azores and refined by local families, are celebrated at Fenadoce, a national sweet fair that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. Beyond that, the city has a strong gaúcho identity, with chimarrão, churrasco, traditionalist dance centres and a long carnival tradition led by its samba schools. It is also known for a lively literary and musical scene.

Transport is provided by the BR-116 highway, by a regional airport with flights to Porto Alegre and São Paulo, and by the port on the São Gonçalo channel. The state capital is around four hours away by road.

The Federal University of Pelotas, the Catholic university and the federal institute together give the city one of the largest student populations in the state, with particular strength in agronomy, dentistry and epidemiology.

Pelotas is worth visiting for its remarkable nineteenth-century centre, its sweets and its unmistakably southern Brazilian character.