The story
Olinda Law School can be considered UFPE's precursor. It was created by Pedro I and is, along with the University of São Paulo Law School, founded on the same day, the oldest law school in the country. Afterwards, it was transferred to Recife. In 1895 the School of Engineering of Pernambuco also started to function. These two faculties/free schools, and those of Medicine (1927), Philosophy currently known as Faculdade Frassinetti do Recife - FAFIRE (1941) and Belas Artes (1932), became the base courses to UFPE's formation.
On 11 August 1946, the University of Recife was created, one of the first university centers of the North and Northeast of Brazil.
In 1948, the construction of the university's campus starts. The discussion about the construction's site started a year before that. Between the cogitated places were terrains in the neighborhoods of Joana Bezerra, Santo Amaro and Ibura, the Faculty of Law's area, in Recife's centre; and a lot in Várzea, the same place where the Engenho do Meio functioned before and where the university is located nowadays. This choice was made in function of a project to the construction of an avenue in the place. Climatic conditions and the topography of the terrain were also considered.
The resources given in the acquisition and implantation of the university's campus were provenient of the state's government, that allocated 0,10% of sale taxes and consignations to the project's edification. The first buildings to be built on campus were the vivarium, a space dedicated to animal farming, that used to be located in the area which nowadays the Department of Nutrition and the Center of Health Sciences are located. The campus architectonic project's conception was made by a Venezian architect named Mário Russo.
In 1965, the University of Recife became the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), authority tied to MEC.
From Wikipedia’s article on Federal University of Pernambuco, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3