Belém

Belém was founded on 12 January 1616, when the Portuguese captain Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco anchored in Guajará Bay and built a wooden fort, the Presépio, on a point at the mouth of the Guamá River. The settlement, called Feliz Lusitânia, was meant to secure the Amazon for Portugal against the Dutch, English and French, and it grew on former Tupinambá land through decades of conflict with foreign rivals and with the Tupinambá, who rose against the settlers and took the fort in 1619. In 1625 a customs post, the Casa de Haver o Peso, was set up on the waterfront, the origin of today's market, and in 1751 the seat of the State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão was moved to Belém, which became the first capital of the Amazon. The Italian architect Giuseppe Landi gave it many of its 18th-century churches and palaces.

Grão-Pará was governed separately from Brazil until it accepted independence late, on 15 August 1823. Resentment at its treatment fed the Cabanagem of 1835 to 1840, a popular revolt that took Belém before it was crushed. Later in the century the rubber boom made the city rich: the Theatro da Paz opened in 1878, squares and boulevards were laid out, and the iron market hall of Ver-o-Peso was inaugurated in 1901.

The collapse of rubber brought a long decline, and the 20th century filled the low land around the centre with crowded working-class districts and the skyline with apartment towers. Since 2000 the waterfront has been reopened with the Estação das Docas and other projects. In November 2025 Belém hosted COP30, the United Nations climate conference, at the Hangar convention centre; Brazil's capital was symbolically transferred to the city for its duration, and more than 30 works on lodging, urban infrastructure, transport and sanitation were carried out in preparation.

The Círio de Nazaré, held on the second Sunday of October since 1793, is the heart of the city's year. About two million people follow the small image of Our Lady of Nazareth from the cathedral to the basilica, devotees fighting for a hold on the rope tied to her carriage, and the celebrations last two weeks, with a river procession, a children's Círio and a closing Re-Círio. The family lunch that follows is often compared to Christmas, and UNESCO recognised it as intangible heritage in 2013.

Belém's music mixes the old and the electronic. Carimbó, a drum and dance tradition with Afro-Brazilian, Portuguese and Indigenous roots, has its cultural hub in Pará, while brega and tecnobrega, the electronic music of Belém, fill the sound systems of its rave-like parties. Indigenous, African and Portuguese influences run through the city's festivals, food and folklore, and in 2015 Belém joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for gastronomy.

Football is followed passionately. Clube do Remo and Paysandu, the city's two great clubs, have played the Re-Pa derby since 1914, and the big games fill the Mangueirão stadium. Paraenses are proud of their regional identity — of their food, their rain and their mango trees — and often say Belém do Pará to distinguish their city from the many other Beléms.

About 1.3 million people lived in the municipality at the 2022 census, making it the largest city in Pará and the second of the North Region, and about 2.5 million live in the wider metropolitan area. Most of the municipality's territory is actually islands: Mosqueiro, Cotijuba, Combu and dozens of others, some reached only by boat, where families harvest açaí and city people go for weekend lunches by the river.

Its busy port moves the produce of the Amazon, and the city is the main commercial centre of the region. The centre is a contrast of tiled 19th-century houses and high-rise flats, while peripheral districts such as Guamá, Jurunas and Pedreira house much of the working population. Despite its nickname, Belém counts among the least tree-covered state capitals in Brazil once the old mango-lined avenues are left behind.

The day follows the heat and the rain: early starts at the markets, a slow midday, and an afternoon downpour after which the streets steam and fill again. Evenings are spent in squares, at the waterfront and in neighbourhood bars, and the calendar builds towards October and the Círio. Homicides fell sharply in the years to 2022, though care is still needed after dark.

Belém's cooking is built on manioc and the river. Tucupi, the yellow juice of manioc boiled for days to remove its toxins, flavours tacacá, a hot soup with shrimp and jambu, a leaf that makes the mouth tingle, sold in gourd bowls from street stalls. Pato no tucupi, duck cooked in the same broth with jambu, and maniçoba, manioc leaves cooked for days with salted pork, are the festive dishes of the Círio.

Açaí, most of Brazil's crop of which is grown in Pará, is eaten here as a thick purple purée, and the pairing of fried fish and açaí at Ver-o-Peso is one of the symbols of northern Brazilian food. The market and the stalls along the bay sell river fish such as filhote, the name for younger goliath catfish, along with medicinal herbs and fruits most visitors have never seen.

Those fruits — cupuaçu, bacuri, taperebá, tucumã and pupunha, a starchy palm fruit eaten boiled — turn up in juices, sweets and the city's ice-cream shops, which make many flavours from them. The restaurants of the Estação das Docas and the bars of Umarizal serve regional cooking in more comfortable surroundings, and an evening beer by the bay is part of the local routine.