Cooperative Fishing With Dolphins — UNESCO Intangible Heritage (2024)
For nearly 200 years, Laguna's artisanal fishermen have worked alongside wild bottlenose dolphins to catch mullet (tainha) at the mouth of the Lagoa de Santo Antônio. The dolphins drive schools of fish toward the line of waiting fishermen and signal — with a distinctive head slap or sharp dive — the precise moment to cast their nets. The behavior was first documented in the 1840s and is passed down through generations on both sides: the fishermen teach their sons, the dolphins teach their calves. In December 2024, UNESCO inscribed the practice on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It is one of the few documented cases of cooperative interspecies hunting in the world, and the cultural anchor of the town.
Açorean Colonial Heritage — 1676 and Forward
Laguna was founded in 1676 by bandeirante Domingos de Brito Peixoto, then resettled by waves of Azorean immigrants from the mid-18th century onward as the Portuguese crown pushed to populate the southern frontier. The Centro Histórico — declared a National Heritage site by IPHAN in 1985 — preserves the Açorean architectural pattern: whitewashed walls, blue-trimmed windows, sloped tile roofs, and narrow stone-paved streets organized around a central praça and waterfront church. The Igreja Santo Antônio dos Anjos (1696) anchors the old town. The Açorean influence runs through the food (mullet grilled, smoked, or pirão), the festivals, and the Catholic calendar.
Anita Garibaldi — Birthplace of an Italian Unification Heroine
Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro — known to history as Anita Garibaldi — was born in Laguna in 1821. She met Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1839 during the Farroupilha War, fought alongside him on horseback through Brazil, Uruguay, and Italy, and became a central figure in the Risorgimento before dying in 1849 at age 28. Her statue stands on the Laguna waterfront, the Casa de Anita Garibaldi museum sits in the historic center, and her name is attached to streets and plazas across both Brazil and Italy. For Italians she is a national heroine; for Lagunenses she is a local woman who left and changed the world.
Farol de Santa Marta — The 1891 Lighthouse and the Cape Beyond
About 14 km southeast of town, on the rocky cape that closes the southern edge of the lagoon system, stands the Farol de Santa Marta — completed in 1891 with original Belgian Barbier lenses, still operational, and one of the most powerful lighthouses on the South Atlantic coast. The cape itself is a separate world from Laguna proper: dramatic granite headlands, empty beaches, a fishing village (Farol) of around 1,000 people, and surfing breaks that draw a small Brazilian crew. Reaching it requires either the long road around the lagoon or — historically — the cable ferry across the Canal Henrique Lage. Worth a half-day on a no-wind morning.