Ilha de Santa Catarina · 54 km end to end

Florianópolis

Floripa, Flozzynops, Flops, Florry, Flozz

A guide for friends and family that come to stay. Curated by Faiz, Zael, Jake and Nicole.

What you are actually coming to

Six things that explain most of what you will notice.

Ilha da Magia: One island, 54 km from Ponta das Canas at the top to the 1861 lighthouse at Naufragados on the bottom, with more than forty beaches along the way. The bit people call Floripa is really the island plus a slice of mainland.
Azorean, not Rio: Settlers came from the Azores and Madeira in the 1740s and 50s, and that is still the thing to understand. It is why the old villages are lime-washed with tiled roofs, why the accent sounds nothing like the rest of Brazil, and why so much of the food is seafood.
It used to be Desterro: The city was Nossa Senhora do Desterro for two hundred years and was renamed Florianópolis in 1894, after Marshal Floriano Peixoto. Older people still say Desterro. The Azorean crafts survived too — renda de bilro, the bobbin lace, is still made here.
The oyster capital: Santa Catarina grows most of Brazil's farmed oysters and most of those come out of Ribeirão da Ilha, the quiet Azorean stretch on the west coast. Here they cook them, which catches most people out — gratinéed under cheese, ao bafo in the steam, grilled on the shell. Eating them where they are grown also costs a fraction of what it costs anywhere else.
The bridge: Ponte Hercílio Luz opened in 1926 and was the thing that connected the island to the mainland. It closed in 1982, sat rusting for decades, and reopened in 2019 after one of the longest restorations in the country. It is one of the largest eyebar suspension bridges ever built, and it is on everything here, including the flag.
Ilha do Silício: The other nickname, and the one that explains the present. Tech is about a quarter of the city's economy — the highest share of any state capital in Brazil — and there are several times more startups per head here than in São Paulo. It is why the cafés are full of laptops at eleven on a Tuesday, why a beach town has coworking at all, why so many people you meet are foreign and working remotely, and why the island is bougie for Brazil.