Salvador tourist information

Although Todos os Santos Bay was first encountered by Europeans and christened in 1502, the city of Salvador wasn't founded until 1549 by a fleet of Portuguese settlers headed by Tomé de Souza, the first governor general of Brazil. It quickly became Brazil's main sea port and the first colonial capital of Portuguese Brazil, a center of the sugar industry and the slave trade. The city became the seat of the first Catholic bishop of Brazil in 1552, and is still an ecclesiastical power center of Brazilian Catholicism. Its cathedral, still standing today, was completed in 1572. 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 capital city of the Portuguese viceroyalty of Grão-Pará and its province of Bahia de Todos os Santos. The Dutch captured and sacked the city in May of 1624, and held it along with other NE ports until it was re-taken by the Portuguese in April of the following year.

Salvador was the first capital of Brazil and remained so until 1763, when it was succeeded by Rio de Janeiro, the new economic power center of that era. The city became a base for the Brazilian independence movement and was attacked by Portuguese troops in 1812, before being officially liberated on July 2, 1823. It settled into graceful decline over the next 150 years, out of the mainstream of Brazilian industrialisation. It remains, however, a national cultural and tourist center.

By 1948 the city had some 340,000 people, and was already Brazil's fourth largest city. By 1991 the population was 2.08 million.

In the 1990s, a major city project cleaned up and restored the old downtown area, the Pelourinho, or Centro Historico ("Historical Center").

Salvador has been the birthplace of many noted Brazilians, including musicians such as song-writer Dorival Caymmi, MPB star Gal Costa, and Grammy-winner Gilberto Gil. Gil later went on to be a city council member (vereador) and is currently the Brazilian Minister of Culture. Notable writers associated with the city include Jorge Amado, considered one of Brazil's greatest authors and fabulists and João Ubaldo Ribeiro. The famous Brazilian visual artist Carybé is based in Salvador as well.

Salvador currently has a Metro System under construction (although recent visits suggest that construction has been severely delayed). The Metro is projected to have two lines and will be integrated with bus and rail services. The first stage of the metro was to have been ready in 2006 (or, with delays, by early 2007).

Salvador has an international airport named Deputado Luís Eduardo Magalhães International Airport. In addition to domestic and regional services, it has non-stop flights to Lisbon, Madrid, and Miami. Its IATA code is SSA and it is the sixth busiest airport in the country, the first in northeastern Brazil, behind CGH, GRU, BSB, SDU and GIG.

Many guide-books stress that people who have a lot of money or who do not appear to be Brazilian should use caution in Salvador: gaps between rich and poor are large, and pick pockets and thieves may catch if one is overdressed. One way to avoid this is to "dress down" and be very observant. Also, travelling in groups at night or not travelling alone at all (even during the day) can reduce the risk. However, many travellers feel that this emphasis on danger is over-done, and that Salvadoreans as Brazilians are charming, pleasant and always-smiling.

Salvador is a very culturally rich city, being a bastion of Afro-Brazilian customs and ways. Consequently, religions of Yoruba and other African derivation, such as Candomblé, Umbanda, and Quimbanda, are practiced by much of the population, in most cases in conjunction with Roman Catholicism. Native musical forms include the spiritually influenced afoxé, the community-based blocos afros, and the more popular axé and samba as well. Salvador's visual arts, theater, and literature have also gained a worldwide following, with Jorge Amado being a renowned author whose novels featured local themes. The local cuisine, spicy and based on seafood, strongly relies on typically West African ingredients and techniques, and is much appreciated throughout Brazil. Capoeira, a unique form of martial arts, combining agile dance moves with unarmed combat techniques, is also very popular in the area and largely of African origin (85% of the population). Even the local dialect of Portuguese is laden with African words and intonations, and sounds very "relaxed," especially when compared to European Portuguese. In part because of this atmosphere, Salvador is quickly becoming a popular "heritage" destination for African-Americans.

The city contains many fine colonial buildings, its Historic Center having been designated a World Heritage Site by Unesco. There are found many magnificent old houses, the nation's first medical school, and, even more importantly, Brazil's oldest cathedral (1572) and over 350 additional churches, many featuring significant works of art. The great number of Catholic houses of worship in the city has earned it the nickname of "Black Rome."