Brazil's most livable city — botanical gardens, Ukrainian pierogis, and churrasco
Curitiba is one of South America's great urban planning success stories — a city of efficient tube-station buses, preserved historic neighbourhoods, and the most extraordinary mix of immigrant food cultures in Brazil. The German, Italian, Ukrainian, and Japanese communities who settled the Paraná highlands from the 1870s onward each left a food district: Santa Felicidade for Italian family-style churrascaria; Batel for craft beer; the Largo da Ordem fair for crepes, borscht, and pierogis every Sunday.
Curitiba was founded by gold prospectors in the 1690s but remained a small village until the 19th century, when the Brazilian government subsidized European immigration to the southern states. Between 1870 and 1930 waves of Italians, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles, and Japanese settled the Paraná highlands — their descendants account for most of the current population and the unusual genetic and culinary diversity that sets Curitiba apart from the rest of Brazil.