Qualla: Planaltina, Federal District

Planaltina, Federal District: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nevinho, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 7 September 1922 - the hundredth anniversary of Brazilian independence - a caravan of forty people climbed Centenário Hill just outside a small Goiás town called Planaltina and placed a stone there. The stone declared, officially, the site of a future national capital. Brasília was still thirty-eight years away. The caravan had neither engineers nor bulldozers, only a ceremonial intent. But they were right. The capital that would rise from the cerrado in 1960 would be planted directly in the territory of this town - and Planaltina would become, in the strangest way possible, both older than Brasília and a part of it.

Image: Nevinho | CC BY-SA 3.0

Planaltina, Federal District: Mestre d'Armas

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit myself, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bandeirantes came to this region in the first half of the 18th century, hunting gold and emeralds across the cerrado. The settlement that would become Planaltina is believed to date from around 1790, and its first name - Mestre d'Armas, "Master of Arms" - came from a blacksmith w...

Image: myself | CC BY-SA 3.0

Planaltina, Federal District: The Cruls Commission

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nevinho, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1892 - three years after Brazil became a republic - a scientific commission arrived in Mestre d'Armas. They were astronomers and geologists, doctors and botanists, led by Belgian astronomer Luiz Cruls, and their task was to survey the central plateau for a site where the count...

Image: Nevinho | CC BY-SA 3.0

Planaltina, Federal District: Renamings and a Stone

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AloAlo GracasaDeus, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1910 the town tried a new identity: Altamir, "high and gazing," because of the views from the surrounding ridges. The name never caught on. In 1917 it tried again - Planaltina, meaning "of the high plains" - and this one stuck. By then the town had a hydroelectric plant and a ...

Image: AloAlo GracasaDeus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Planaltina, Federal District: Divided by Brasília

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emerson Marlboro, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1955, Marshal José Pessoa's commission finalized what the Cruls mission had started: the 5,814 square kilometers of the new Federal District were superimposed on three municipalities of Goiás. Planaltina was one of them. When the lines were drawn, the town's territory was cut ...

Image: Emerson Marlboro | CC BY-SA 4.0

Planaltina, Federal District: A Divided City Still

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anderson Bueno Pereira, CC BY-SA 3.0. Planaltina is two cities in the same place. The traditional sector preserves architecture from the end of the 19th century and the quiet atmosphere of a small interior town. The new neighborhoods, built after 1966 to house migrants who could not settle in Brasília proper, are cro...

Image: Anderson Bueno Pereira | CC BY-SA 3.0