Salvador

Everything You Need to Know

Salvador da Bahia was Brazil's first capital and the largest slave port in the Americas, a history that forged one of the most distinctive cultures in the Western Hemisphere. The Pelourinho — the cobblestoned historic center and UNESCO World Heritage Site — cascades down a hillside in a riot of pastel-painted colonial facades, baroque churches dripping with gold leaf, and open squares where the percussive thunder of Olodum drum circles fills the tropical air. It is here that African, Portuguese, and indigenous traditions fused into something entirely new.

That fusion defines everything in Salvador. Candomblé — an Afro-Brazilian religion blending Yoruba orixás with Catholic saints — is openly practiced in terreiros (temples) throughout the city, and public festivals honoring Yemanjá (goddess of the sea) and other orixás draw millions. Capoeira, the martial art disguised as dance that enslaved Africans developed to resist their captors, was born in Salvador's streets and is still practiced in rodas (circles) in the Pelourinho every evening. The food is equally distinctive — acarajé (black-eyed pea fritters stuffed with vatapá shrimp paste), moqueca baiana (coconut-milk fish stew), and bobó de camarão (shrimp in cassava cream) are dishes found nowhere else with this depth of flavor.

Salvador's Carnival — though less internationally famous than Rio's — is widely considered the more authentic celebration, with six days of trio elétrico sound trucks rolling through streets packed with two million revelers dancing axé music in organized blocos. It is raw, joyous, and overwhelming — much like Salvador itself.