Campinas
municipality of São Paulo state, Brazil
Campinas ( kam-PEE-nəs; Brazilian Portuguese: [kɐ̃ˈpinɐs]; lit. 'Plains, Meadows') is a city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, located 84 kilometers northwest of the city of São Paulo. As of 2024, the city's population is estimated at 1,185,977, making it the fourteenth most populous Brazilian city and the third most populous in São Paulo state. The city's metropolitan area encompasses twenty municipalities with a total population of 3,491,150 people.
Etymology
Campinas means meadows or grasslands 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' official crest and flag has a picture of the mythical bird, the phoenix, because it was practically reborn after a devastating epidemic of yellow fever in the 1800s, which killed more than 25% of the city's inhabitants.
History
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, cotton and sugarcane farms.
The construction of a railway linking the city of São Paulo to Santos' seaport, in 1867, 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.
The public source identifies “Campinas” as municipality of São Paulo state, Brazil. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Campinas, municipality and Paulo.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q171617. VIAF identifies the subject as 137836140. The Library of Congress control number is n50055260. Authority coordinates are -22.901, -47.057. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024, 1774 and 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Campinas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.