Campos do Jordão

The high grasslands of the Serra da Mantiqueira took their name from Brigadeiro Jordão, who owned much of them. In 1874 Mateus da Costa Pinto bought land beside the Imbiri river and moved up from Pindamonhangaba to build there; 29 April 1874 is counted as the town's founding date. Domingos José Nogueira Jaguaribe Filho later bought Mateus Pinto's land, and the settlement around him became Vila Jaguaribe.

The thin, dry mountain air brought the town its first purpose. Sanatoriums for patients with tuberculosis and other lung diseases were built in Vila Abernéssia, and Vila Emílio Ribas followed from 1920. A railway was laid up the escarpment from Pindamonhangaba in the Paraíba valley, and in 1934 Campos do Jordão became a municipality in its own right, separated from São Bento do Sapucaí.

From the 1950s advances in medicine meant tuberculosis was no longer the threat it had been, and the town turned to tourism. Wealthy families from São Paulo built winter houses, hotels and inns copied German, Swiss and Italian models, and in 1964 the state governor Adhemar de Barros opened the Boa Vista Palace as an official winter residence. The classical music festival followed in the 1970s. The state now lists Campos do Jordão as one of its climatic resorts, and the town draws millions of visitors a year.

Brazilians call Campos do Jordão the "Brazilian Switzerland", for its European-style architecture, its cool climate and its mountain scenery. The look is deliberate: half-timbered façades, steep roofs and chalets line the streets of Capivari, and hydrangeas grow well in the temperate climate. The araucaria, the Paraná pine more usually linked with Brazil's far south, grows naturally on the higher slopes and gives the landscape its distinctive outline.

The town's cultural calendar is built around winter. The Campos do Jordão Winter Festival, conceived in 1970 by the state finance secretary Luis Arrobas Martins and modelled on the Tanglewood festival in the United States, brings orchestras, soloists and music students every July and is considered the largest classical music festival in Latin America. Its main stage is the Cláudio Santoro auditorium. In the same weeks the town fills with visitors from São Paulo and beyond, and seasonal bars and clubs open for the crowds.

For many Brazilians the appeal is the chance to feel cold: to wear coats, sit by a fire and eat hearty food. Outdoor sport is the other attraction, with hiking, climbing, horse riding, treetop rope courses and off-road riding in the hills. Most residents are Christians — about three in five Catholic and more than a quarter evangelical.

The municipality has an estimated population of about 48,000. Tourism is the economy: hotels, inns, restaurants, shops, building and maintenance work for holiday homes, and the services that keep them running. In July the number of people in town more than quadruples, while some of the grandest houses in the best districts stand empty for much of the year, used only in the holidays.

That gap shapes life here. Visitors see Capivari's cafés and chalets; most residents live in Abernéssia, Jaguaribe and other neighbourhoods, where ordinary shops, schools and services are found. Building on the steep slopes of the plateau carries a real risk of landslides, and the town's water supply can run short in the drier part of the year — a separate state park protects its sources.

The rhythm of the year follows the seasons more than in most Brazilian towns: crowded, cold and busy in winter, quieter and wetter in summer. The access road from the Paraíba valley is the town's lifeline, and on holiday weekends it carries heavy traffic in both directions.

The town's cooking is built for cold evenings. The German, Swiss and Italian restaurants of Capivari are the heart of eating out, and trout has a local history: one of Brazil's first commercial trout farms was set up in Campos do Jordão. It is the cooking of a holiday resort rather than of the surrounding countryside, and a large part of the fun for visitors is that it feels like a trip to Europe.

Chocolate is one of Campos do Jordão's best-known products. Chocolate shops are found around Capivari, and at the Araucária factory visitors can see something of how chocolate is made and visit a chocolate museum.

Beer has a local name too: the Baden Baden microbrewery is one of the town's most popular places to drink, and in the winter season extra bars and lounges open to cater for the crowds. Outside the resort centre, the everyday food is the same as across São Paulo state: per-kilo lunch restaurants, bakeries and the rice-and-beans plate.