Novo Hamburgo

Novo Hamburgo is an Brazilian city in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. 247,032 people lived here in 2020 and its area is 224 km². It was named after the German city of Hamburg. The people who founded the city in the 1830s were from the Azores. During the next 50 years, many people immigrated from Germany. They were not from Hamburg, but mostly from the Hunsrück, a mountain range near Koblenz. They all used the port of Hamburg to leave Europe, though. Novo Hamburgo is about north of Porto Alegre. Together with Franca, the city calls itself the capital of shoes (Capital Nacional do Calçado, in Portuguese).