Antônio Prado, the Italian Town

About this place

Antônio Prado is a small town of about 13,000 people in the Serra Gaúcha of Rio Grande do Sul, near Caxias do Sul, holding the largest and most complete protected group of buildings from Italian settlement in Brazil. Until 1880 its forests were the land of the Kaingang people, who fed on the nuts of the araucaria pines; Italian immigrants settled it in the late nineteenth century under the empire's plan to populate the region, building wooden and stone houses in their own style. Since the 1980s the national heritage institute has listed 48 buildings in its centre, and others in the countryside survive as witnesses of that era. In 1995 it hosted the shooting of «O Quatrilho», the second Brazilian film nominated for an Oscar: the street paving was covered with earth and lamp posts removed to recreate a town of the early twentieth century.