Porto Alegre

A long lakeside park stretching south from the old power station chimney. Locals rate it the best place for sunset, and at dusk people with flasks line the embankment in a long row.

A market opened in 1869, with stalls for mate leaves, dried meat and river fish arranged around a courtyard. Followers of an Afro-Brazilian religion treat one spot at the centre of its floor as sacred and stop there to make their requests.

A rose-pink former hotel where the poet Mario Quintana lived for years, now a cultural centre that keeps his room as it was. The top-floor garden looks out over downtown rooftops and the lake.

A big park on the edge of downtown, where a craft and antiques fair sets up every Sunday and plenty of people wander with mate. Its name commemorates the local freeing of enslaved people.

A white museum by the Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza, where ramps jutting out from the walls carry you between floors. It stands alone beside the lakeside highway, so a taxi is the easier way there.

A residential street where more than 100 tall tipuana trees lock branches into a green tunnel. The city declared it heritage in 2006, and even around noon the sun barely reaches the pavement.

A Renaissance-style cathedral on the hilltop square downtown, with the state government palace and a theatre also framing that square. The mosaics on its front came from the Vatican workshop, and reaching it from the streets below means a steep walk uphill.

An Italian-settled wine valley roughly 2 hours' drive north, where dozens of wineries along the valley road welcome tasters. Many visitors ride a winery tour bus so nobody has to drive.

A park in the middle of an upscale neighbourhood, with a model windmill honouring the Azorean settlers. Cafes and restaurants crowd the streets around it, and weekend mornings here mean a lap of the park and then brunch.

Gardens spread over the city's eastern hills, holding a stand of Parana pines from the southern highlands and a cactus glasshouse. Every weekend families spread out under the trees on its wide lawns and pass the mate around.

The state art museum, in a former tax office begun in 1913 on Praca da Alfandega, strong on painting and printmaking from the south. The May 2024 floods put its ground floor under nearly 2 m of water, and it reopened that December.

A bank headquarters built from 1927 to 1931, now a cultural centre. A French stained-glass skylight roofs the central hall, and the columns and balustrades around it keep the grandeur of the old bank.

An open-air book fair running since 1955. Opening each year as October closes and ending by mid-November, it lines publishers' tents beneath the trees of Praca da Alfandega. Only 14 took part at first; now signings and talks spill into nearby buildings.

A church reached by a tall stairway up from Rua dos Andradas, started early in the 1800s and finished almost a hundred years later. Legend says an unjustly executed slave cursed it never to be completed, a tale still told to explain the long build.

Home of football club Internacional on the shore of the Guaiba, re-roofed to host matches at the 2014 World Cup. On match days red-shirted fans flood the lakeside road, and tickets for the derby with city rival Gremio sell out early.

A low-lying district south of downtown where small bars and music venues crowd Rua da Republica and Rua Joao Alfredo. Students and young crowds favour it, and from Thursday through the weekend the later the hour, the more people spill into the street.