Santa Catarina · Brazil
In the destination Serra Catarinense.
Illustrative images. The pictures in this guide are illustrations based on the real place, not photographs, and may differ from it.
The city
Lages has a history tied to the tropeiros (cattle drovers) and to rural life on the Santa Catarina plateau. You can stroll downtown, visit the cathedral and explore the surrounding landscape of grasslands and araucaria pines.
There's no accommodation in the guide yet in Lages.
1 place picked to eat.
What to know before you go.
The local experience
Opened in 1922, it was built of orange-toned stone in the neo-Gothic style, on Praça João Ribeiro. The stained-glass windows came from Germany, and the high altar displays statues of Senhor dos Passos and Nossa Senhora das Dores (Our Lady of Sorrows).
A viewpoint more than 1,000 meters above sea level, 3 km from downtown, reached by car or by a 513-step stairway. At the top stand a white cross almost 20 meters tall and a chapel, the setting for reenactments during Holy Week.
A rural area of more than 1,100 km² that was a corridor for cattle drives between Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo. Its grasslands with araucaria pines hold stone walls built more than 200 years ago by enslaved people, Indigenous people and farmhands, as well as century-old farms.
It protects 234 hectares of Atlantic Forest with araucaria pines, where 168 bird species have been recorded. Revitalized with restored trails, it was the first place in the town recognized as a Sala Verde (Green Room) by Brazil's Ministry of the Environment.
Discover Parque Natural Municipal João José Theodoro da Costa Neto
Built in 1771 by the town's founder, Correia Pinto, it is downtown, on Rua Zeca Neves. It has a pond with red carp, the bronze Monumento às Lavadeiras (Washerwomen's Monument), a walking track and a playground.
