🇧🇷 Brazil · Central-West
Goiânia is the capital of Goiás and one of Brazil's most remarkable planned cities: it was designed in the 1930s as the state's new capital, with a layout of radial avenues and abundant tree cover that made it one of the greenest cities in the country. It's a major urban centre in the Central-West, known for its Art Deco heritage, its nightlife, its parks and its thriving food and music scene (the cradle of sertaneja music).
Although it isn't a mass tourism destination, Goiânia has attractions of its own —parks such as the Bosque dos Buritis and the Parque Vaca Brava, the Art Deco ensemble downtown, museums and an active cultural life— and it works as a base and gateway to some of the great destinations of Goiás: the Chapada dos Veadeiros (with its canyons and waterfalls), the colonial town of Pirenópolis, the Cidade de Goiás and the hot springs of Caldas Novas.
This guide covers the essentials of Goiânia with a practical eye: the Art Deco heritage and the parks, the cultural and food scene, how to use the city as a base for the Chapada dos Veadeiros and Pirenópolis, how to get there and get around, and where to eat and sleep.
Goiânia was planned and founded in the 1930s (officially in 1933, inaugurated in 1942) to replace the old colonial capital, the Cidade de Goiás (Goiás Velho), considered unfit for growth. Designed under the influence of modern urban planning and with a remarkable Art Deco ensemble, it grew at breakneck speed until it became one of the largest metropolises in the Central-West and the base for tourism in Goiás. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The state of the Central-West and the Cerrado: land of the colonial gold of Goiás Velho, of the hot springs of Caldas Novas and of the landscapes of the Chapada dos Veadeiros, one of Brazil's great natural sanctuaries.
Read the history of Goiás →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In the early 1930s, where a metropolis of more than a million and a half people now stands, there was practically nothing: just cerrado, a few farms and the small town of Campinas. Goiânia is, literally, an invented city: it was drawn on a plan first and only then built on the ground, more than two decades before Brazil repeated the feat —on a larger scale— with Brasília. Understanding its history means understanding why a country decided, at the height of the Vargas era, to found a capital from scratch in the middle of the interior.
Until then, the capital of Goiás was the old Cidade de Goiás (Goiás Velho), a colonial settlement from the gold cycle wedged into a valley with little room to expand, considered unfit to keep pace with the state's growth and modernisation. The decision to move the capital, driven by the interventor Pedro Ludovico Teixeira, fitted into the political climate of the Vargas era and into the ideal of the "march to the west", which sought to integrate and develop the country's interior. The new capital was deliberately laid out on a more favourable site, with a modern urban plan. The project, in which the French urban planner Attílio Corrêa Lima and later the firm of Armando de Godoy played leading roles, drew on the urban ideas of the day (with echoes of the City Beautiful movement and the garden cities), with a layout combining radial and diagonal avenues, squares, distinct sectors and abundant green space. The official founding is dated to 1933; the capital was in fact moved in 1937 and formally inaugurated in 1942, after the so-called Batismo Cultural de Goiânia.
One of the most valuable legacies of that vision is the rich Art Deco architectural heritage built in the original core, around the Avenida Goiás and the Praça do Bandeirante. Public buildings, cinemas and stations with elegant geometric lines embody the modern, optimistic spirit in which Goiânia was conceived, and today they make up one of the most important Art Deco ensembles in the country, recognised by IPHAN.
Originally designed for a modest population, Goiânia grew at a dizzying pace that far outstripped its planners' forecasts. The expansion of the agricultural frontier into the cerrado, the growth of cattle ranching and farming, and the city's role as the administrative and service centre of Goiás drew a steady flow of people from the countryside and from other regions of the country.
Within a few decades, the planned city turned into a large metropolis, one of the biggest in Brazil's Central-West, with a sprawling metropolitan area. That rapid growth brought the usual challenges of fast urbanisation —expansion beyond the original plan, infrastructure, mobility— but the city kept much of its leafy character and its wide green spaces, holding on to its reputation as a city with a good quality of life and plenty of vegetation.
The proximity of Brasília, inaugurated in 1960 a little over 200 kilometres away, reinforced the region's dynamism. Goiânia consolidated its position as an economic, educational, medical and service hub for Goiás and neighbouring areas, forming part of one of the most thriving zones in inland Brazil. Its profile as a young city in constant expansion contrasts with the colonial past of the old capital, which remains as a historical record of the Goiás of the gold era.
Over the decades, Goiânia developed a cultural identity of its own that is surprisingly vibrant. The city became one of the great hubs of sertaneja music —the Brazilian country style—, with many artists and duos emerging from the region, and it built an active nightlife, food and bar scene. The cooking of the cerrado, with pequi as its emblematic ingredient, and dishes such as galinhada and pamonha, are part of that regional identity.
Goiânia also works as a major gateway and logistics base for the tourist destinations of Goiás. From here you can reach the Chapada dos Veadeiros, a national park of canyons and waterfalls declared a World Heritage Site; the charming colonial town of Pirenópolis; the historic Cidade de Goiás, the former capital and also a World Heritage Site; and the famous hot springs of Caldas Novas. With its airport and road connections, the capital organises tourism across the state.
So the history of Goiânia brings together its origin as a modern, planned capital of the 1930s, its explosive growth into a great metropolis of the cerrado and its present-day role as a cultural and food hub and a tourism base. Visitors find a green, dynamic city with valuable Art Deco heritage, an active cultural scene and a strategic position for discovering the natural and historic wonders of Goiás.
A tragic and defining chapter in the history of Goiânia is the radiological accident of September 1987, considered one of the worst civilian nuclear accidents in history and the largest outside a nuclear facility. It began when two scrap collectors found, in an abandoned radiotherapy clinic in the city centre, an old teletherapy machine containing a capsule of caesium-137 chloride, a highly radioactive material.
Unaware of the danger, they took the source apart and sold the pieces to a scrapyard. There the owner was captivated by the blue powder that glowed in the dark —the caesium-137— and shared it with relatives and neighbours, who handled it, rubbed it on their skin and even swallowed it without knowing it was an invisible poison. The contamination spread through several houses and people.
When, weeks later, the first patients arrived at hospitals with severe symptoms and the cause was identified, dozens of people had already been contaminated. The official toll was four direct deaths in the following weeks, hundreds of people with some degree of contamination and thousands screened. Decontamination meant demolishing houses and burying enormous quantities of radioactive waste in a special repository. The episode left a deep mark on the city's memory, inspired artworks, books and films, and became a worldwide case study on the risks of orphan radioactive sources and the importance of radiological safety.