Vacaria is a municipality in the northeast of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is located at a latitude of 28° 30' 44" South and a longitude of 50° 56' 02" west, with an altitude of 971 meters. Its population in 2020 was estimated to be 66,575 inhabitants. The total area of the city is 2105.6 km². The city is known in Brazil for its climate and its production of apples.
Its Catedral Nossa Senhora da Oliveira is the episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Vacaria, which was founded in 1937 as a territorial prelature.
It was the Jesuit missionaries that, in the 16th century, started the colonization of the area by spreading the livestock brought from the reductions to the extensive wilderness known as "Baqueria de los Piñales". During more than a century, disputes with the Guarani Indians marked the history of the region, before it was consolidated as an official trail connecting the Plata region to Brazil. In the 19th century the fields of Vacaria were once more the stage of great battles, this time between the imperial soldiers and the republican revolutionists (Ragamuffin War).
