🇧🇷 Brazil · South
Morretes is a small, charming historic town at the foot of the Serra do Mar, on the coast of Paraná, famous for two things: the spectacular train ride that links it with Curitiba as it drops down the mountains, and barreado, its signature dish cooked for hours in a clay pot. With its colonial core of Portuguese houses, the river running through it and its Atlantic Forest surroundings, Morretes is one of the most enjoyable escapes in southern Brazil.
The great draw is the Serra do Mar rail crossing: a tourist train that leaves Curitiba and descends one of the most beautiful and vertiginous railway lines in Brazil, built in the 19th century, crossing 13 tunnels, 41 bridges and viaducts, waterfalls and viewpoints over preserved Atlantic Forest, all the way down to Morretes. Once in town, the ritual is to sit down to a barreado lunch, with banana and cassava flour on the side, and stroll the historic centre beside the Nhundiaquara River.
This guide covers the essentials of Morretes with a practical eye: how to get here (above all on the famous train), what to see in the centre and around it, where to try barreado, where to sleep and how to combine the visit with Curitiba, Antonina, Paranaguá and Ilha do Mel. Morretes is train, colonial history, Atlantic Forest and good food: the heart of the Paraná coast.
Morretes was born in the 18th century as a colonial town on the route linking the coast at Paranaguá with the Curitiba plateau, at a point on the banks of the Nhundiaquara River, at the foot of the Serra do Mar. It was an obligatory stop on the old mule-train roads and for the goods moving up and down the mountains (gold, yerba mate, port produce). In the 19th century the famous Curitiba-Paranaguá railway line was built, a feat of engineering that crossed the Serra do Mar and made Morretes the destination of the journey. Its centre keeps its Portuguese colonial architecture, and its cooking, led by barreado, expresses the inheritance of the coastal settlers. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The southern state of araucaria pine forests and great waters: from the Jesuit missions of Guairá razed by the bandeirantes to the gold of Paranaguá, from yerba mate and the tropeiros to European immigration and the coffee of the north. Home to the Iguazú Falls, to Itaipú and to Curitiba, a world benchmark in urban planning.
Read the history of Paraná →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the train existed, the only way up from the coast of Paraná to the Curitiba plateau was on muleback, along stone tracks that climbed the green wall of the Serra do Mar. And on that climb, on the banks of the Nhundiaquara River, there was an obligatory stop where the mule trains rested, the produce of the interior was traded and the goods from the port were loaded: Morretes. Everything that makes the town famous today — the train, the barreado, the colonial centre — grew out of that role as a hinge between two worlds, the coast and the mountains.
Morretes took shape in the 18th century as a colonial town on the Paraná coast, on the route linking the port of Paranaguá with the Curitiba plateau. The region had already known the alluvial gold cycle and then the yerba mate economy; along its roads passed the tropeiros driving mules towards São Paulo. Together with neighbouring Antonina and with Paranaguá, Morretes was part of that old colonial web of the southern coast, where the sea, the port and the mountains set the pulse of life.
The centre of the town took shape with typical Portuguese architecture: brightly coloured colonial houses, churches and a street plan that follows the bends of the river. That historic core, preserved to this day and walkable in a few minutes, is one of the town's great draws and the most visible witness to its colonial origin. Walking the bank of the Nhundiaquara, with the Serra do Mar cut out behind, is to look in on the Morretes of two centuries ago.
The event that transformed the history of Morretes was the building of the railway linking Curitiba with Paranaguá across the Serra do Mar, one of the greatest engineering feats of imperial Brazil. Work began on 5 June 1880 and advanced along three simultaneous stretches, with thousands of workers fighting the forest, the rain and the sheer drop of the mountains. The line opened on 2 February 1885, after years of effort, and the first marías-humos (steam locomotives) began climbing the mountain.
The hardest stretch — the climb up the Serra do Mar — was handled by the engineer João Teixeira Soares, who took over in 1882 right where the steepest part began. To beat the precipices they had to bore tunnels, throw bridges over the rivers and hang viaducts over the void. The most famous is the Viaduto do Carvalho, some 84 metres long, with masonry pillars set into the rock, named in honour of Carlos de Carvalho, then president of the province of Paraná. That viaduct and the viewpoints along the route still take the breath away from passengers on the tourist train.
The railway answered a concrete need: to connect the productive Curitiba plateau with the port of Paranaguá so that yerba mate and other goods could reach the sea. The work energised the region's economy and made Morretes a key stop on the line. In time, that run through the Atlantic Forest — among waterfalls, valleys and viaducts — would become one of the great tourist draws of southern Brazil, and the railway would go from a freight artery to a destination in itself.
If the train is the soul of the journey, barreado is the soul of the table. More than a dish, it's a ritual with more than three centuries of history. Its origin is attributed to the Portuguese settlers — of Azorean root in particular — who reached the coast of Paraná in the 18th century; the oldest records point to the village of Guaraqueçaba as the cradle of the recipe. The name comes from the verb "barrear": to seal the lid of the heavy clay pot with a paste of cassava flour and ash, so that the steam can't escape and the meat cooks in its own juices for many, many hours, almost to the point of falling apart.
Barreado was closely tied to festivities. It was cooked for the entrudo — the forerunner of Carnival — because it had a brilliant practical virtue: reheated, it loses none of its flavour, so it was made in advance and freed people from cooking during the days of revelry. That same quality also made it the food of the tropeiros, who stopped in Morretes looking for cachaça and barreado to kill their hunger before taking on the mountains. Abundance, festivity and the road: three threads of coastal history cross in a single dish.
Today barreado is the culinary must of Morretes. It's served at midday, almost always as a rodízio (all you can eat), with cassava flour and slices of banana on the side, at the historic restaurants in the centre. The town's culinary identity is rounded out by its sweets — the famous banana candies — its artisanal cachaças and the produce of the coast. A historic town, the gateway to the Serra do Mar and the capital of barreado, Morretes brings together colonial heritage, Atlantic nature and good food.
Through the 20th century, the Serra do Mar railway went on doing its original job of hauling freight between the plateau and the port of Paranaguá, but the advance of the roads — especially the BR-277 and the historic Estrada da Graciosa — shifted much of the movement of passengers and goods to cars and trucks. The train, though, kept something no road could offer: a route of exceptional beauty through one of the largest preserved stretches of Atlantic Forest in Brazil.
That scenic quality is what, in the closing decades of the century, gave rise to the tourist train. Specialist operators revived the route as a travel experience in itself, with different service categories, and the descent from Curitiba to Morretes among tunnels, viaducts and viewpoints became one of the most celebrated outings in the south of the country. Morretes thus began receiving a steady flow of visitors coming down for a barreado lunch and a walk around its historic centre; in a single summer, between December and March, the train can move tens of thousands of passengers.
In parallel, the region consolidated the protection of its natural surroundings with areas such as the Parque Estadual Pico do Marumbi and the recognition of the Serra do Mar as a biosphere reserve. Today Morretes lives largely off tourism: colonial heritage, food, Atlantic nature and the legendary train coexist to make the town one of the best-loved escapes in Paraná. That the same line hacked out with pick and shovel in 1880 to bring yerba mate down to the port is today the one carrying travellers up to look at the forest is, perhaps, the best summary of the history of Morretes.