Salvador

Tupinambá villages lined the Bay of All Saints when the Portuguese arrived. Diogo Álvares, the castaway known as Caramuru, settled nearby after a shipwreck in 1509, and in 1534 Francisco Pereira Coutinho, the first captain of Bahia, founded a short-lived settlement near today's Porto da Barra. In 1549 Tomé de Sousa, the first governor-general, founded the fortified city of São Salvador on the escarpment above the bay as the capital of Brazil. The city grew on two levels, the administrative and religious upper town and the port and warehouses of the lower town.

Sugar from the Recôncavo made Salvador rich, and it became one of the main ports of the Atlantic slave trade, receiving enslaved Africans, many of them Yoruba-speaking people from present-day Benin. A Dutch fleet captured and sacked the city in 1624 before it was retaken. The capital moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1763, and Salvador's elites stayed loyal to Portugal at independence until besieged troops surrendered on 2 July 1823. In 1835 enslaved African Muslims rose in the Malê revolt, Brazil's largest slave rebellion of its kind.

In 1873 the Lacerda Elevator, Brazil's first, joined the two levels of the city. The 20th century brought the petrochemical complex at Camaçari, while the Pelourinho decayed until restoration began; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. Salvador hosted matches at the 2014 World Cup, rebuilt its rail lines as a metro, and joined UNESCO's network of Creative Cities as a City of Music.

Candomblé, formed from Yoruba and other West African religions combined with Catholicism, has some of its oldest temples here, among them the Casa Branca do Engenho Velho, the first Afro-Brazilian temple protected as national heritage. The same blend runs through public life: the feast of Bonfim honours both Our Lord of Bonfim and the orixá Oxalá, and the offerings to Iemanjá at Rio Vermelho draw crowds of every faith.

Capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian fusion of dance and martial art, took its modern forms in Salvador, where Mestre Bimba and Mestre Pastinha opened schools in the first half of the 20th century; groups still train and play in the squares of the old town. Music is everywhere — the blocos afro Ilê Aiyê, Olodum and Filhos de Gandhi, axé, samba de roda and the Tropicália of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil — and the city's carnival, recognised by Guinness World Records as the biggest street party in the world, runs for six days on three circuits.

Jorge Amado's novels made the city's streets and characters famous worldwide. Handicrafts such as the Bonfim ribbons and good-luck charms express the city's religious mix. Bahians are known across Brazil for warmth and an unhurried pace, and courtesy, greetings and respect for elders matter in daily exchanges.

The 2022 census counted about 2.4 million people in the city, making it one of Brazil's largest; the metropolitan region had an estimated four million in 2020. About half of the residents described themselves as pardo, or mixed race, and about a third as Black. The city stretches along a peninsula between the bay and the Atlantic, from the colonial centre to high-rise seafront districts and vast self-built neighbourhoods inland.

Services, government, universities, tourism and construction dominate the city's economy, while the petrochemical complex at Camaçari and new factories in the metropolitan region provide industrial jobs. Inequality is stark: the seafront districts are prosperous, but poverty is widespread in the peripheral neighbourhoods, which bear most of the city's violent crime. Political life in Bahia was long dominated by the political boss Antônio Carlos Magalhães and an authoritarian clientelist style known as carlismo.

Life runs outdoors and late. Evenings bring people to the beaches, the squares of Rio Vermelho and the acarajé stalls, and from December to Carnival the festival calendar shapes the city's rhythm. The metro, built in stages, has eased some of the long commutes from the north of the city.

Salvador's cooking is strongly African in origin, built on dendê palm oil, coconut milk, dried shrimp, peanuts and cashews, and hot malagueta pepper. Acarajé, a fritter of black-eyed pea dough fried in dendê, split and filled with vatapá, caruru and shrimp, is the city's signature, sold from street stalls by baianas in white; abará is its steamed cousin, wrapped in banana leaf. Both are also offerings in Candomblé, and the akará of the Yoruba is acarajé's ancestor.

Moqueca baiana, fish or shrimp stewed in coconut milk and dendê with peppers, tomato and coriander, is served bubbling in a clay pot with rice and pirão, a thick gravy of fish broth and cassava flour. Bobó de camarão is shrimp in a creamy cassava purée, xinxim de galinha is a chicken dish, and sarapatel is a stew of pork offal. Arroz de haussá, rice served with fried dried beef, is a Bahian speciality.

Sweets include cocada, coconut candy. Tropical fruit juices and ice creams are everywhere, and beer and caipirinhas are drunk ice-cold at beach kiosks.