Goiania: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Goiânia did not grow; it was drawn. In the early 1930s the governor Pedro Ludovico Teixeira decided to move the capital of Goiás out of the old mining town and build a new one on open savanna, and the architect Attílio Corrêa Lima, trained in Paris, laid out avenues that fan out from a single square. This walk follows Avenida Goiás from that square to the old railway station, past the Art Deco buildings of the first years. About two hours, flat; go before ten or after four, and carry water from May to September, when the air is very dry.
The ten best sights in Goiania
-
1Praça Cívica
Where the city began; the avenues of the original plan all lead here
-
2Monument to the Three Races
The bronze symbol of the city, in the middle of the square
3Palácio das EsmeraldasThe Art Deco governor’s palace at the head of the square
-
4Museu Zoroastro Artiaga
The state museum: start here to understand Goiás
5Bandeirante MonumentThe Anhanguera on his pedestal where the two main avenues cross
-
6Old Railway Station
Art Deco station with murals by Frei Confaloni; the Sunday market spreads around it
-
7Teatro Goiânia
The Art Deco theatre of the founding years, still staging shows
-
8Metropolitan Cathedral
The cathedral of the city centre, a short walk from the square
9Oscar Niemeyer Cultural CentreNiemeyer’s white concrete forms; check the programme before going
-
10Centro Cultural Martim Cererê
The rock and indie stage of the city, built in old water tanks
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Goiania →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Goiania:
Free walking tours in Goiania
The capital drawn on paper
Goiânia did not grow; it was drawn. In the early 1930s the governor Pedro Ludovico Teixeira decided to move the capital of Goiás out of the old mining town and build a new one on open savanna, and the architect Attílio Corrêa Lima, trained in Paris, laid out avenues that fan out from a single square. This walk follows Avenida Goiás from that square to the old railway station, past the Art Deco buildings of the first years. About two hours, flat; go before ten or after four, and carry water from May to September, when the air is very dry.
- Praça Cívica · On 24 October 1933 Pedro Ludovico laid the cornerstone of the new capital here. The plan borrowed from Versailles: the main avenues run out from the square like the toes of a goose’s foot, so that from the governor’s palace you look straight down them.
- Monument to the Three Races · The bronze group of three figures, put up in 1968, stands for the three peoples Brazil tells itself it was made of: the Portuguese, the Africans and the native peoples. It became the emblem of the city, and every school trip in Goiás is photographed under it.
- Palácio das Esmeraldas · The governor’s palace was among the first buildings of the new city, in the clean geometric Art Deco that became Goiânia’s style. In 2003 the national heritage institute listed the Art Deco ensemble of Goiânia, and this palace is its centrepiece.
- Museu Zoroastro Artiaga · The state museum carries the name of Zoroastro Artiaga, the historian who founded it and gathered its first collections. Rocks and minerals of the plateau, objects of the native peoples of Goiás and the story of the move of the capital are all in one Art Deco building on the square.
- Bandeirante Monument · The statue is Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva, the explorer from São Paulo who opened Goiás to gold mining. The story goes that he set fire to a bowl of cane spirit and told the native people he would burn their rivers the same way unless they showed him the gold; they called him Anhanguera, old devil, and the avenue beside him carries that name.
- Old Railway Station · The railway reached Goiânia only in the 1950s, and the station was built in the same Art Deco as the city. Inside are murals by Frei Nazareno Confaloni, an Italian Dominican friar who settled in Goiás and became one of the founders of its modern painting.
Buying and eating Goiás
Goiânia is the trading town of the Brazilian interior: shopkeepers ride overnight buses from half the country to buy clothes here, and the farms of the cerrado send their corn, cheese and pequi to its markets. This walk goes from the Sunday hippie fair through the wholesale streets to the two old food markets of the centre. Three hours with stops to eat; best on a Sunday morning, when the Feira Hippie is on, but keep your phone out of sight in the crowds.
- Feira Hippie · The Feira Hippie began at the end of the 1960s with a handful of artisans selling on the Praça Cívica. It outgrew one site after another and today fills the square and streets around the old station with thousands of stalls every Sunday, one of the largest open-air markets in Latin America.
- Rua 44 · The streets around Rua 44 became the largest wholesale clothing district of the Centre-West. Most buyers are sacoleiros, small traders who arrive on overnight buses, fill huge bags and sell the clothes back home, which is why the shops open before sunrise.
- Goiânia Bus Station · The bus station is also a shopping mall, Araguaia Shopping, built into the same complex, which says a lot about a city where so many visitors come to buy. From here the coaches leave for Pirenópolis, Caldas Novas and Brasília.
- Mercado Central · The place to meet pequi, the yellow fruit of the cerrado that Goiás cooks with rice and chicken. Never bite into it: under the soft flesh is a layer of fine spines, and you scrape the flesh off with your teeth. The stalls also sell pequi in jars, cheese from the farms and local cachaça.
- Mercado da 74 · A smaller neighbourhood market where the city eats pastel, deep-fried pastry the size of a hand, with garapa, sugar cane juice pressed in front of you. Pamonha, green corn ground and cooked in its own husk, is the dish Goiás is proudest of, eaten sweet, salted or with cheese and sausage.
- Feira da Lua · On the square of Praça Tamandaré the Feira da Lua sets up in the evening, with crafts and food tents. It is the place to try empadão goiano, a deep pie of chicken, pork sausage, cheese, egg and guariroba, the bitter heart of a local palm.
Shade, water and the year 1987
The side of Goiânia few visitors see: the city boasts of its green, and the parks of the old plan are a few streets from the place where, in 1987, one of the worst radiological accidents in the world began. This route starts on that street, then walks through the buriti palm grove, the art museum inside it and the lake parks to the south, and ends at the stage where the city plays its rock. Two and a half hours; in the dry season, from July to September, the ipê trees are in flower along the way.
- Rua 57 · In September 1987 two men took apart a radiotherapy machine left in an abandoned clinic in the centre and sold the scrap; inside was a capsule of caesium-137, and its powder glowed blue in the dark. Four people died, among them a six-year-old girl, and the accident was rated level five on the international nuclear scale.
- Bosque dos Buritis · The grove is named for the buriti, a tall fan palm that grows only where water reaches the surface; in the cerrado a line of buritis means a spring. The park was kept green from the first plan of the city, a few minutes from the Praça Cívica.
- Museu de Arte de Goiânia · The city art museum stands inside the grove and shows the artists of Goiás. The best known of them, Siron Franco, painted a whole series on the caesium accident in the months after it, and his work is the way many Brazilians remember it.
- Lago das Rosas · The oldest lake park of the city, with the zoo on its shore. In the dry months the ipês around it bloom pink, yellow and white on bare branches, before the leaves, which is the one season the cerrado turns colourful.
- Centro Cultural Martim Cererê · The cultural centre was made out of old water reservoirs, and it is named after Martim Cererê, a modernist poem by Cassiano Ricardo about the making of Brazil. Since 1995 it has been home to Goiânia Noise, the rock festival that made the capital of country music a stop for independent bands.
- Parque Vaca Brava · The lake park of Setor Bueno, ringed by apartment towers, is where the city comes out to run and walk when the heat breaks. End here at sunset, with a coconut from the kiosks and the joggers going round.
Getting to Goiania and getting around
- Santa Genoveva Airport · Mostly domestic flights; connections abroad go through São Paulo or Brasília
- Goiânia Bus Station · Coaches to Brasília, Pirenópolis and Caldas Novas; a shopping mall is built into it
- Terminal Praça A · A hub of the Eixo Anhanguera, the bus corridor that crosses the city east to west
Cheap eats in Goiania
The food of Goiás is the food of the cerrado farms: pamonha, green corn ground and cooked in its own husk; empadão goiano, a deep pie of chicken, sausage, cheese and the bitter palm heart called guariroba; and everything cooked with pequi, a fragrant yellow fruit with spines under its flesh. In the city, people eat standing at market counters, at the Sunday fairs and at the pit dogs, the sandwich kiosks that stay open late on street corners. Prices are rough and change, in reais.
- Mercado Central · A slice of empadão at the counter, about R$ 20–30
- Mercado da 74 · A pastel with cane juice, about R$ 15–20 together
- Feira Hippie · Pamonha from the Sunday stalls, about R$ 10–15
- Feira da Lua · Skewers and empadão at the evening fair, about R$ 10–25
- Feira do Sol · Pastel and caldo at the Sunday Feira do Sol, about R$ 10–20
- Praça Universitária · A loaded pit dog sandwich late at night, about R$ 20–35
- Cora Coralina House, City of Goiás · Crystallised fruit sweets in the old capital, about R$ 10–30 a box
Museums in Goiania
The museums of Goiânia tell of the cerrado, the native peoples of the plateau and the city that was built on it in the 1930s.
- Museu Zoroastro Artiaga · The state museum on the square
- Memorial do Cerrado · A life-size cerrado village
- Museu de Arte de Goiânia · Art of Goiás in the palm grove
- Oscar Niemeyer Cultural Centre · Contemporary art in Niemeyer’s forms
- Anthropological Museum · The native peoples of central Brazil
Parks and gardens in Goiania
Goiânia calls itself one of the greenest cities in Brazil. The parks of the old plan and the lake parks of the new districts are where the city walks, runs and sits in the evening.
- Bosque dos Buritis · Buriti palms by the square
- Lago das Rosas · The old lake and the zoo
- Parque Vaca Brava · Sunset runs round the lake
- Parque Flamboyant · The newest lake park
- Jardim Botânico · A patch of wild cerrado forest
Live music in Goiania
Goiânia is the capital of música sertaneja, the Brazilian country music that fills stadiums, and many of its biggest stars came out of Goiás. Alongside it the city has a stubborn rock scene.
- Centro Cultural Martim Cererê · Rock and indie in the old water tanks
- Teatro Goiânia · Shows in the Art Deco theatre
- Oscar Niemeyer Cultural Centre · Concerts in the music cylinder
Holy places in Goiania
Goiás is deeply Catholic, and its great pilgrimage leaves from Goiânia every July on foot, to the basilica of Trindade.
- Basilica of the Divine Eternal Father, Trindade · The pilgrimage of the Divine Eternal Father
- Metropolitan Cathedral · The cathedral of the centre
- Campinas · The church of the town older than the city
- Pirenópolis · The mother church of a colonial town
Frequently asked questions about Goiania
What is there to see in Goiania?
The top sights in Goiania are Praça Cívica, Monument to the Three Races and Palácio das Esmeraldas. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Goiania?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Goiania without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Goiania?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Goiania, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The capital drawn on paper.
How do you get to Goiania and get around?
The main ways are Santa Genoveva Airport, Goiânia Bus Station and Terminal Praça A. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Goiania, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Goiania that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Goiania for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.