Brazil - Cultural Landscape of Paranapiacaba: Village and railway systems in the Serra do Mar Mountain Range, São Paulo

The inscription comprehends the cultural heritage of the Railway Village of Paranapiacaba, built by the English company São Paulo Railway Co., the natural heritage of Atlantic Rainforest in the stretch circumscribed by the perimeter of the Nascentes de Paranapiacaba Natural Park, in the Municipality of Santo André, on top of the Serra do Mar Mountain Range, and the technological railroad heritage of the funicular and rack-and-pinion systems at the Mogi River Basin between the municipalities of Santo André and Cubatão, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The São Paulo Railway Co. (SPR), inaugurated in 1867 (1st funicular system, or “Serra Velha” system), was the first railway in the State of São Paulo, carrying passengers and the coffee production from the paulista province of Jundiaí to the Santos harbor. At the scarp of Serra do Mar, at 796 meters high, the intense activity of coffee economy allowed by SPR gave rise to the Railway Village of Paranapiacaba, which, in the Tupy-Guarani language, means “the place whence one sees the sea”. Between 1896 and 1901, when the railway was duplicated (2nd funicular system or “Serra nova” system), the worker’s village was expanded by SPR, who conceived a planned Village adopting the urban and sanitary standards in vogue in Europe after the Industrial Revolution. A clock manufactured in London, by Johnny Walker Benson, was placed at the second Station of Paranapiacaba, inaugurated in 1900, lending the place, usually covered by the dense fog of the mountain range at dusk, a typically English character.