Current Time in Santa Maria, Brazil

Santa Maria lies in the centre of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, at the foot of the escarpment where the highlands of the interior drop towards the rolling grassland of the pampa. Its position at the geographical heart of the state has earned it the nickname of the heart of Rio Grande. The subtropical climate is one of the most varied in Brazil, with hot summers, cold winters that occasionally bring frost, and rainfall spread through the year.

Around two hundred and eighty thousand people live in the city, which functions as the commercial, medical and educational centre for a wide region of farms producing rice, soya, wheat and cattle.

The settlement began in 1797 as the camp of a Spanish and Portuguese commission sent to demarcate the boundary between their empires, and it grew slowly until the arrival of the railway in the late nineteenth century transformed it into the most important junction in the state. Immigrants came from Italy, Germany, Poland and the Middle East, and the railway workers built the Vila Belga, a district of terraced houses that is now protected as a rare example of European style workers' housing in Brazil. The old station and railway offices, restored as cultural spaces, remain among the finest buildings in the city.

Santa Maria is above all a university town. The Federal University of Santa Maria, founded in 1960, was the first federal university in Brazil established outside a state capital, and its enormous campus on the edge of the city teaches medicine, veterinary science, engineering, agronomy and the arts to tens of thousands of students. Together with a Franciscan university and several colleges it gives the city a young population and an active cultural and political life. A large military garrison, one of the most significant in the country, adds another distinct community.

Attractions include the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Itaimbé Park in the centre, the municipal theatre, the Gama d'Eça educational museum in a nineteenth century building, a planetarium and the viewpoint on the Morro do Elefante with its panorama over the plain. The surrounding countryside is remarkable for palaeontology, since the Triassic rocks of the region have produced some of the oldest dinosaur fossils in the world, and research centres and museums in Santa Maria and the neighbouring Quarta Colônia district display these finds. The Quarta Colônia itself, settled by Italian immigrants in the 1870s, offers stone churches, wine cellars, waterfalls and the Ibicuí valley.

Transport is by road, with highways linking the city to Porto Alegre about three hours east and to the Argentine and Uruguayan borders, and by a regional airport. Buses serve the urban area.

Local culture blends gaúcho traditions of chimarrão, churrasco and folk dance with the student energy of a university town, and the Farroupilha celebrations each September fill the streets with horsemen and traditional dress.

Santa Maria is important as the educational and logistical heart of central Rio Grande do Sul and as a base for exploring the dinosaur country and immigrant villages around it.