Campinas is a city and county in São Paulo state, Brazil.


Campinas is a city and county (município) located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

The county area is 797,6 km². Population is approximately 1,059,420 (2004 est.), with over 98% in the urban region. Its metropolitan area, defined in 2000, has some 19 cities and a population of 3,2 million people. Campinas is also the administrative center of the meso-region of the same name, with 3,641,766 inhabitants (2005 est.) and 49 cities. It is the third largest city in the state, after São Paulo (10,927,985 inhab. - 2006 est.) and Guarulhos (1,283,253 inhab. - 2006 est.).

History

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The city was founded on July 14, 1774, by Barreto Leme. It was initially a simple outpost on the way to Minas Gerais and Goiás serving the "Bandeirantes" who were in search of precious minerals and Indian slaves. In the first half of the 19th century, Campinas became a growing population center, with many coffee and sugarcane farms. The construction of a railway linking it to the city of São Paulo and Santos' seaport, in 1817, was very important for its growth. In the second half of the 19th century, with the abolition of slavery, farming and industrialization attracted many foreign immigrants to replace the lost manpower, mainly from Italy. Coffee became an important export and the city became wealthy. In consequence, a large service sector was established to serve the growing population, and in the first decades of the 20th century, Campinas could already boast as having an opera house, theaters, banks, movie theaters, radio stations, a philarmonic band, two newspapers (Correio Popular and Diário do Povo), a good public education system (with the Escola Normal de Campinas and the Colégio Culto à Ciência), and hospitals, such as the Santa Casa de Misericórdia (a charity for poor people) and the Casa de Saúde de Campinas (for the Italian community), and the most important Brazilian research center in agricultural sciences, the Instituto Agronômico de Campinas, which was founded by Emperor Pedro II. Finally, the construction of the first Brazilian highway in 1938, between Campinas and São Paulo, the Anhanguera Highway, was a turning point in the integration of Campinas into the rest of the state.

Campinas was the birthplace of opera composer Carlos Gomes (1836—1896) and of the President of the Republic Campos Salles (1841—1913). It was home for 49 years for Hércules Florence, reputed as one of the early inventors of photography, photocopying and the mimeograph.

Title and symbols

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Campinas means grass fields in Portuguese and refers to its characteristic landscape, which originally comprised large stretches of dense subtropical forests (mato grosso or thick woods in Portuguese), mainly along the many rivers, interspersed with gently rolling hills covered by low-lying vegetation.

Campinas is also known as "Cidade das Andorinhas" (City of Swallows), because it was a favorite spot for these migratory birds, which flocked annually in enormous numbers to downtown Campinas. However, they almost disappeared around the 1950s, probably because the church and plaza where...