Culture of Ribeirao Preto

design projected by Japanese-Brazilian artist Tomie Ohtake. The Pedro II Theatre is now the third largest opera house in Brazil and is the home of the Ribeirão Preto symphony orchestra, one of the oldest and most important in Brazil.

An important fact for the city life happened in 1911 with the opening of its first factory, the Antarctica Brewery Company, nowadays part of the AmBev group. It was Antarctica which built the Pedro II Theatre. The Antarctica factory led to the opening of several beer houses in the city and one of them named Pinguim (penguin in Portuguese), became particularly famous and made Ribeirão Preto nationally renowned for the quality of its draft beer (chope or chopp in Brazilian Portuguese). Many people say that Pinguim has the best draft beer in Brazil and it became so important that it is now a symbol of the city; people say that coming to Ribeirão Preto and not visiting Pinguim is like going to Rome and not seeing the Pope. There are four Pinguim beer houses in Ribeirão Preto: two of them, called Pinguim 1 and 2 respectively, are at the November XV square (the central square of Ribeirão Preto) right beside the Pedro II Theatre). The other two are at the shopping centers Santa Úrsula and Ribeirão Shopping respectively. By the way, the Penguin beer house was named after the Antarctica company's logo (see at [1]).Many small "alambiques" exist in the region, each producing its own singular "Pinga," better known as Cachaça. These "Pingas" are often aged and are available in many flavours, while still maintaining their flair.

Pinguim is not the only good beer house in Ribeirão Preto. Ribeirão Preto is a hot climate city, which makes people go out in the evening to chat and enjoy cold draft beers in bars. Therefore, the city is teeming with bars, from the