Machine translation of the Portuguese Wikipedia article (November 2026 version).
Blumenau is a municipality in the state of Santa Catarina, in the South Region of Brazil. It is located in the homonymous microregion and in the Vale do Itajaí Mesoregion. It is the seat city of the Vale do Itajaí Metropolitan Region. It is the third most populous municipality in the state, the 8th in the South Region of Brazil, the 78th in Brazil, and the only medium-large city in Santa Catarina, constituting one of its main industrial, technological and university hubs.
It was founded by the German chemist and pharmacist Hermann Blumenau, who arrived by boat via the Itajaí-Açu River accompanied by seventeen other German settlers. He disembarked at the mouth of the Garcia stream on September 2, 1850, and divided the land into lots so that the settlers could build their homes, mostly houses built with the half-timbered technique (enxaimel). The stretch between the mouths of the Velha and Garcia streams defined the current city center.
The city has a cultural calendar focused on festivals based on the daily life and customs of European immigrants, notably the Germans, with the Oktoberfest, the second largest beer festival in the world, which takes place every October over 17 days, and the Stammtisch, a traditional gathering of associations, held both on Rua XV de Novembro in the city center and in Vila Itoupava. The Italian community organizes the Festitália, and meetings of the Centro de Tradições Gaúchas (CTG) and various other expressions of European and Brazilian cultures also take place.
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