Pope's Woods and Polish Memorial Tours

Inaugurated in 1980, shortly after Pope John Paul II’s visit to Curitiba, the sprawling Pope's Woods are made up of 515,000 square feet (48,000 square meters) of native vegetation. The area is home to the outdoor Polish Immigration Memorial, a statue of the pope and a monument honoring famous Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

Near the memorial are seven original Polish houses, built around 1878 during the start of the Polish colonization of the region and later reassembled here in Pope’s Woods. Visitors can admire the mastery of the builders, who carefully sculpted the pine logs to fit perfectly together. The most prominent house was transformed into a chapel in honor of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, patroness of Poland. In the other houses are furniture and utensils used during the first Polish immigration wave in the late 1870s. Elsewhere in the woods, visitors can also make use of the bicycle trail, playground, theater stage and Portuguese‐style teahouse.