Cuiabá
— — a frontier city the river still finds its way through.
Not only on a wall.
“Capital of Mato Grosso, founded by gold-seekers in 1719 on the banks of the Cuiabá River. The cerrado opens north toward the Chapada dos Guimarães escarpment; south the land flattens and floods into the Pantanal. The heat sits on the city most of the year. A monument at Praça Moreira Cabral marks what was once calculated as the geodesic centre of South America.
Cuiabá, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cuiabá is the capital of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, founded in 1719 as a gold-rush settlement on the river that gave it its name. The city proper holds about 650,000 people and the metropolitan area roughly 900,000. It sits at 165 metres elevation on the Brazilian central plateau, about 75 kilometres south of the Chapada dos Guimarães escarpment and a similar distance north of the Pantanal floodplain. A monument at Praça Moreira Cabral marks the historical geodesic centre of South America, calculated in 1909 by the Rondon Commission.
Cuiabá is one of the hottest cities in Brazil. Daytime highs run between 32 and 36°C most of the year, and the dry winter months of August and September regularly see temperatures above 40°C. The wet season runs October through April, when afternoon thunderstorms break over the cerrado and the rivers begin their slow rise toward the Pantanal flood. The combination of latitude (about 15°S), low elevation, and continental position produces a heat that locals work around with siestas, shaded courtyards, and early-morning markets.
The Cuiabá River rises in the Chapada dos Guimarães and runs south through the city before joining the Paraguay River and feeding the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland at roughly 150,000 to 195,000 square kilometres across Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. The annual flood pulse peaks February through April and drives one of the highest concentrations of wildlife on the continent: jaguar, caiman, capybara, and hyacinth macaw. Cuiabá is the most common northern gateway for Pantanal expeditions, with road access down the Transpantaneira from nearby Poconé.