Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia - Brazil 🇧🇷 Travel & Discover

Salvador de Bahia is located on the southeastern promontory of the Bay of Todos os Santos in northeastern Brazil. The city is an eminent example of Renaissance urban planning adapted to a colonial site. It is composed of an upper city with a defensive, administrative and residential character, overlooking the lower city with its port, the center of commercial activities. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, Salvador was also one of the major points of convergence of European, African and American Indian cultures. One of the most significant examples of this religious pluralism is embodied in the 18th century Roman Catholic Señor de Bonfim Church. Built in 1745, the church became famous for its power to miraculously heal. The Portuguese settlers long ago brought counter-reformation Catholicism to Brazil, which in its efforts to hold back the Protestant sweep of Europe, revitalized saint worship and mysticism. At the same time, the slaves brought their deities from Angola, the Congo, Ghana and Nigeria. The Catholic Church, the official religion of Brazil, does not officially accept Candomblé, the African-Brazilian religion of Bahia. But due to the country's enormous size, it became difficult for the clergy to exert its control over New World Catholics. On the ceiling of the Room of Miracles hang the ex-photos offered by faithful parishioners, wax or plastic replicas of body parts, representing those who were cured or need curing. The walls of the small room are covered with photos and testimonials on slips of paper, thanking Señor de Bonfim for his miracles. The photos vividly display the sufferings of the faithful. Pictures of torsos taped by adhesive, car crashes and burned skin peeled and raw. Some have prayed for assistance in being elected to office or obtaining a promotion at work. Several military hats hang on the walls of the room. The Salvador coastline is one of the longest in Brazil, with some 50 km of beaches distributed between the high city and the low city. The capital's beaches boast an enormous ecological diversity because of this difference, and include calm inlets ideal for swimming, sailing, diving and underwater fishing, as well as open beach with strong waves, favored by surfers. There are also beaches surrounded by reefs, forming natural pools of stone. After the defeat of the Dutch in the 17th century, the Portuguese built and refurbished many of the forts that line the Bay of All Saints. Due to its elegant form, the Montserrat Fort is considered the most beautiful military construction of the Brazilian colonial period. Construction was begun in 1583 on a strategic position on top of the most projecting side of the peninsula, overlooking the city's port. According to local lore, Salvador has 365 Catholic churches, one for each day of the year. Whether or not this is true, there are thousands of places to worship for the faithful of every denomination. Most of the city's residents worship African divinities and Catholic saints, sometimes both together. The Church of Our Lady of Good Voyage was originally built for the patients of the hospital. In 1908, after it was completely renovated and expanded, it began to be attended by the wealthy families of the region. This church in the Baroque style is famous for its façade adorned with blue and white Portuguese tiles, named azulejos, arranged in a zigzag pattern. Baroque-style decorations adorn the church's interior. The historic center of Salvador is divided into three main areas, the Municipal Square on the Largo de São Francisco, the Pelourinho, and the Largo de Carmo, ending at the Largo de Santo Antônio Alem de Carmo. The great religious complex formed by the Church and Convent of Our Lady of Carmo is situated on the Largo de Carmo. The interior of the church is in the Baroque style, with neo-Gothic details. It is a favorite site for celebrating weddings and baptisms. The historic center, which revolves around the Pelourinho neighborhood, with its triangular plaza, is characterized by its faithfulness to the 16th century plan, the density of its monuments, and the homogeneity of its constructions. It is set on a hilly and picturesque site that exalts the urban scenery by providing plunging and ascending views of incomparable beauty. In addition to a number of important monuments from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as a cathedral, Salvador has preserved a host of 16th century palaces. The many characteristic streets of the colonial city are lined with churches in the Baroque style and bright multicolored houses, some of which are decorated with stucco. Officially called José de Alencar Plaza, Largo do Pelourinho, which means pillory in Portuguese, got its name because for many years it was the place where convicts were tied to a pillory and exposed to the gaze of passers-by and public vilification. Torrents of blood have flowed on the rounded stone of its pavement, polished by time, particularly the blood of tortured slaves who often died there, the victims of their longing for freedom, and the cruelty of their owners. The old part of the city of Salvador, with its unique atmosphere, architecture, and way of life, can truly be considered a city of its own. The church and convent of Saint Francis are up the and to the left, at the far side of the Terreiro de Jesus, which stands at the end of an adjacent square, the Praça Anqueta, beyond a large stone cross. The church was built in the high Baroque style by colonists who made their wealth in the sugar trade. Mostly completed by 1755, the church is renowned for its exuberant interior decoration, for which over 100 kilograms of gold were used. All the surfaces, walls, pillars, vaults, and ceilings are covered by gilt woodwork and paintings. The decoration of the church is considered one of the most complete and imposing in Portuguese-Brazilian Baroque gilt woodwork art, making it a perfect example of the golden church, Igreja Dourada. The Jorge Amaro House Foundation is located on the Largo de Polorinho, the setting of Jorge's stories, and a melting pot of different ethnicities, customs, and cultures, which together form the mortar of this mixed-race society. The Jorge Amaro House Foundation contains a study and research center that is responsible for storing, organizing, and preserving the writer's library, as well as collecting and handling written documentation, periodicals, photographs, videos, and computerized support materials. Construction on the church of the Third Order of Saint Dominic was begun in 1731 and completed six years later. It features a Rococo-style façade and neoclassic engraving. Its foreplan is typical of 18th-century churches, with lateral corridors and an overlapping pulpit. The ceiling of the nave features an illusionist concept, and the noble room panels are attributed to José Joaquim da Rocha. The tiles in the main chapel depict paintings of Saint Dominic. The church and adjacent chapels are lavishly adorned in the Baroque style, with paintings and statues of Jesus, Mary, and the saints of the Catholic Church. While veneration of the saints and their depiction in works of art is typical of Roman Catholic practice, it took on a new meaning in Salvador de Bahia, where it encountered beliefs from native African religions. Candomblé, the resulting religion typical of Salvador, is characterized by the fusion of Christian and African elements. Over the centuries, Candomblé has incorporated many elements from Christianity. Crucifixes are sometimes displayed in Candomblé temples, and the African deities were often identified with specific Catholic saints. To this day, Candomblé houses in Brazil commonly display statues of the Catholic saints who correspond to the house's deity. In addition, Candomblé followers often participate in Catholic celebrations for the particular saint that corresponds to their deity of Candomblé. This syncretism was in part a reaction to church-inspired persecution by authorities and slave owners, who viewed Candomblé as paganism and witchcraft. Indeed, there are reports of Christian devotional altars being used in early slave houses to hide African religious icons and ritual objects. Even after the end of slavery, the claim that ritual dances of Candomblé were in honor of Catholic saints was often used, by practitioners and authorities alike, as an excuse to avoid confrontation. The Lacerda Elevator is one of the Originally built in 1872, it was renovated in the Art Deco style in 1930, at which time it was renamed in honor of Lacerda, the elevator's original engineer. Towering over the Terreiro de Jesus Square, the Cathedral Basilica was built in 1672 and completely restored in 1996. The church has preserved impressive works of art in its interior, and its main altar, with its 18 gold-covered columns, is considered a masterpiece. The church also houses several altars made of cedar wood, covered by thin layers of gold. The chapels of the cathedral offer an interesting showcase of altarpiece art from the late 16th through the mid-18th centuries, all decorated with sculptures and paintings. The most notable form of Baroque expression in Brazil was the art of Tala, decorative gilded and polychrome wood carving, which was first practiced on altarpieces in chapels and churches, and later spread to the walls and ceilings of high altars, as well as transepts, and in many cases to the nave and side chapels as well. Gilded and polychrome decorative carving thus covered most of the interior of the churches. Surfaces were ornate, full of movement and colorful. The sacristy of the church is richly decorated with Baroque furniture, 17th-century Portuguese azulejo styles, and wooden panels on the ceiling painted with Mannerist motifs and portraits of important Jesuits. Prominent among the different religious orders that set out to educate and convert the native populations in the New World to Christianity were the Jesuits. Founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola and noted for its educational, missionary, and charitable works, the Jesuits were once regarded by many as the principal agent of the Counter-Reformation, and later a leading force in modernizing the church. The Order of the Society of Jesus, as the Order is officially known, together with the Dominicans and Franciscans, made its mark on South Africa's colonial cities by building majestic and often richly decorated churches adjacent to their monasteries. The Jesuits who settled in Salvador did not disappoint in this regard. So lavish was their church that it was later made the city's cathedral. The first historic capital of Brazil, Salvador de Bahia, was made the seat of the royal administration by the following the orders of King John II of Portugal. The city played a leading economic and political role until 1763, when the government seat was transferred to Rio de Janeiro. The site of the upper city, located in the area of Bahia de Todos los Santos, was discovered in 1502 by The city was then built upon the crest line parallel to the Atlantic coast, which made it easy to defend against Spanish and Dutch attacks. The church of the Third Order of St. Francis features an intricately worked sandstone façade. The spirit of Christian charity and social philanthropy that had swept Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries was largely attributable to the work of St. Francis and St. Dominic. One of the earliest such brotherhoods was the Third Order of Penitents, established in Assisi in 1211. With the establishment of an overseas empire extending from Amboina to the Amazon, the Portuguese took with them to Africa, Asia and America those institutions, including the religious orders, that had become part of the warp and woof of European urban life. In the 1990s, a major restoration effort was undertaken in the Pelourinho neighborhood in to return the area to its original magnificence and turn it into a popular tourist attraction. Pelourinho was placed on the Brazilian National Historic Register and named a World Cultural Site by UNESCO in 1985. With its position on the Bay of All Saints, Salvador is formed by a series of hills and valleys. As a result of its topography, the city ended up being divided into two planes of existence. The upper city, Cidade Alta, and lower city, Cidade Baixa, are connected by the celebrated Elevador La Cerda. The Elevador La Cerda was originally composed of two hydraulic elevators with an art deco roof at the upper terminal, placed one alongside the other at the current location. Popularly known as Parafuso, they were opened in 1873. The Forte do Maris is a circular fort that was built on the shore to protect the city from invasion. Its slightly circular project is formed by a central turret, surrounded by a ring of equal height, constituted by the perimeter and the quarters. Governor Tomé de Souza built Salvador's first customs house in the upper city in 1550. Eventually, it was decided that it would be easier to have one down by the water, within easy access of incoming ships, and a new customs house was built on the current site in 1861. The Palácio Rio Branco dates to 1549, when it was built to serve as the headquarters of Brazil's colonial government. The current construction, completed in 1919, is the result of several renovations and expansions, which have resulted in an eclectic style that leans toward the neoclassical. The mixture of peoples, cultures and types of colonization that characterizes Brazil have had an impact on the development of every aspect of national culture, including architecture and town planning. A country's architectonic heritage is formed by the artistic, political and economic influences of different historical epochs. This succession of distinct historical eras can be seen when walking down the streets of Brazil's colonial cities, and no city displays its cultural heritage with greater pride than Salvador de Bahia. The evolution of architecture in the Western world had direct repercussions on the country, as Mannerism gave way to the Baroque, which in turn evolved into the Rococo style, then Neoclassicism, Eclecticism and finally, in the 20th century, Neogothic, Neocolonial and Modernism. The Barroquinha neighborhood was named for a church, Nossa Senhora de Barroquinha, behind which, incidentally, the precursors to Salvador's oldest continually existing houses of Candomblé were founded, the Casa Branca and Cantuaz. The church was once also the seat of the Sisterhood of Our Lady of the Good Death, a group mixing elements of Catholicism and Candomblé, founded in the early 19th century. Among the city's numerous religious buildings is the Monastery of Saint Benedict in Largo Sao Bento. The religion of Salvador de Bahia is characterized by its synthesis of African Candomblé and Portuguese Christianity. African slaves were forbidden to practice their native religion by their Portuguese masters, who instead promoted Christianity. This led to a fusion between Christian saints and the African gods, known as Orixás. Though Christianity remains the predominant religion in Brazil, Salvador de Bahia, with 80% of its population of black African ancestry, boasts a thriving Candomblé heritage. The Orixás have deep roots in Africa and have been worshipped for at least 5,000 years. They are believed to wield amazing powers over the forces of nature. Eshu, also known as a mediator between man and god, is considered one of the most important Orixás. Other Orixás include Janco, of fire and thunder, Yemená, of seas and oceans, and Nhans, of wind and lightning, holder of the souls of the dead. The terreiros are the main place where cults take place, and it is thought that more than 2,000 such places can be found in the city of Salvador de Bahia. Tico de Torero, the levee, is an artificial lake that was created in the 17th century by Dutch invaders, using the labor of slaves equipped with shovels and pickaxes. They intended to surround the Rio Branco palace with an irrigation ditch that would make it inaccessible to the Portuguese. In the middle of the lagoon rises a set of 6-meter-tall sculptures of eight Orixás, the work of sculptor Tati Moreno. After a form of 1998, the levee was transformed into a public park in order to offer the community large open spaces for relaxation, sports, and other leisure time activities. In the Largo do Campo Grande stands a monument commemorating the victorious Brazilian forces, which entered the town on July 2, 1823, after defeating the Portuguese in the Battle of Peiraj in November 1822 and ending the siege of Salvador. Bahia de Todos os Santos was first encountered by the Portuguese and named in 1502, but the first European man to disembark on Morro de São Paulo, St. Paul's Mount, was Martim Afonso de Sousa, who led an expedition to explore the continent in 1531. In 1549, a fleet of Portuguese settlers headed by Tomé de Sousa, the first governor-general of Brazil, established Salvador. Built on a high cliff overlooking All Saints Bay as the first capital of colonial Brazil, it quickly became its main seaport and an important center of the sugar industry and the slave trade. By 1583, there were 1,600 people residing in the city, and it quickly grew into one of the largest cities in the New World, surpassing any colonial American city at the time of the American Revolution in 1776. Salvador was the first capital of Brazil and remained so until 1763, when it was succeeded by Rio de Janeiro. The city became a base for the Brazilian independence movement and was attacked by Portuguese troops in 1812, before being liberated on July 2, 1823. The neighborhood of Barra has a unique location, situated at the tip of the peninsula that forms the city of Salvador. With the city's coastline almost entirely surrounded by reefs, the Porto da Barra is the only place where small boats can safely reach the shore. The beach faces Itaparica Island on the Baía de Todos los Santos, or All Saints Bay. The Portuguese built and refurbished many of the forts along the Bay of All Saints, after defeating the Dutch in the 17th century. The first fort built in the city was Santo Antonio da Barra, which had the function of preventing enemies from entering the bay area. With construction begun in 1582, it took the shape of an irregular 10-sided polygon. Its current dimensions, however, date back to the 17th century. Today, the wealth of impressive colonial architecture is evidence of Salvador's rich history. Between the modern tower blocks, well-restored enclaves of the old city remain nearly intact, with colonial area cobblestone streets, colorful mansions, and dozens of ornate Baroque churches. For decades, Baía was a treasure waiting to be discovered, beloved by Brazilians and studied by cultural anthropologists, but little known to outsiders. In the last few years, however, the city has emerged from obscurity as important projects focused on exploring, preserving, and promoting the world's cultural heritage have begun to focus increasing attention on Baía. One such project, funded by the state government with the support of UNESCO, has restored the oldest and perhaps most magnificent concentration of colonial architecture in the New World to its former glory, including grand plazas, iron-balconied houses, and Baroque churches dating from the 17th and 18th centuries.