Ribeirão Preto

Ribeirão Preto is a city and a metropolitan area in the northeastern part of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It is the eighth largest municipality of the state, with an area of 650.9 square kilometres, and in 2021 the municipality proper had an estimated population of 720,216, with 1,178,910 in the wider metropolitan area. The municipality was founded on 19 June 1856 and was populated at first by farmers and enslaved Africans arriving from other parts of São Paulo and from Minas Gerais in search of pasture. Later immigrants from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Japan settled on its coffee farms. The mean altitude is 526.8 metres, and the climate is tropical wet and dry, classed Aw in the Köppen system, with rainy summers and dry winters. In 1952 an old farm was donated to the University of São Paulo for a medical school, the first school of its Ribeirão Preto campus, and the city became an educational and university centre.