Fazenda do Pinhal, Historical coffee farm in São Carlos, Brazil.

Fazenda do Pinhal is a coffee estate with several preserved buildings spread across more than 40 hectares, including the main house, slave quarters, machine house, and bakery. The entire complex reflects the working infrastructure of a large plantation from the 1800s, with distinct areas for residence, labor, and production.

Construction of the Casa de Morada and the first economic activities began in the early 19th century under Antônio Carlos de Arruda Botelho, on land acquired by the Arruda family through sesmarias in the Araraquara region in the 1780s. Coffee planting intensified from 1850, overtaking sugar cane and cattle, and enslaved workers were brought from the interior of Bahia. After the abolition laws, Italian immigrants replaced them. The property passed to the family's descendants after Antônio's death in 1901 and was listed by IPHAN and CONDEPHAAT in the 1980s.

The main house library holds thousands of books, including works by Eça de Queiroz and Gilberto Freyre, reflecting the intellectual interests of the family who lived here. Walking through these rooms, you can sense how literature shaped daily life and connected the estate to broader Brazilian cultural circles.

The estate sits at kilometre 4.5 of Estrada do Broa and covers 45 hectares, with the main house, machine house, slave quarters, tulha, coffee drying yards, waterfalls and a walled orchard. The hotel farm that once operated next to the main house closed after the 2009 purchase, so the visit centres on the house and its collection. Much of the route is on foot over uneven ground.

The old slave quarters beside the coffee drying yard were later converted into housing for Italian immigrants and now hold the farm's historical collection. The library, begun around 1840, keeps some three thousand volumes, among them a complete set of Eça de Queiroz and books on the history of coffee.