Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The attached museum displays religious objects; note the controversial icon of the
Virgin Mary breastfeeding baby Jesus.
5
Casa das Onze Janelas
Praça Dom Frei Caetano Brandão • Art galleries: Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun 10am-2pm • R$2 •
T
091 4009 8823
Dating from the early eighteenth century, the
Casa das Onze Janelas
was originally
the town jail and then an arsenal; today it is a cultural centre, with a couple of
contemporary art galleries. The building is also home to one of the city's best
restaurants,
Boteco das Onze
(see p.342). On a terrace behind the building, with a
marvellous view of the river, this is a great place to arrive in the late afternoon and
watch the sunset over the river.
Palácio Antônio Lemos
Praça Dom Pedro II • Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun 9am-1pm • Free •
T
91 3114 1024
he
Palácio Antônio Lemos
, finished in the 1890s at the height of the rubber boom, has
an elegant blue-and-white Neoclassical colonnaded exterior and a series of airy, arched
courtyards that are occasionally used as galleries for travelling exhibitions. Upstairs is
the Salão Nobre, a huge suite of reception rooms running the entire length of the
frontage, featuring crystal chandeliers, beautiful inlaid wooden floors and Art Nouveau
furniture. A separate section of the palace houses the
Museu de Arte do Belém
, with a
selection of paintings dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Palácio Lauro Sodré
Praça Dom Pedro II • Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun 10am-2pm • R$2; Tues free •
T
91 4009 9831
The dazzling white
Palácio Lauro Sodré
was built in the 1770s by Antônio Landí, a
talented émigré Italian who, as an artist, sketched the first scientifically accurate drawings
of Amazonian fauna. It was here that the joint Portuguese-Spanish border commissions set
out to agree the frontiers of Brazil in colonial times. Pará's independence from Portugal in
THE CABANAGEM REBELLION
The
Cabanagem Rebellion
ravaged the region around Belém for sixteen months between
January 1835 and May 1836, in the uncertain years following Independence and the
abdication of Pedro I. What started as a power struggle among Brazil's new rulers rapidly
became a revolt of the poor against racial injustice: the
cabanos
were mostly black and
indigenous or mixed-blood settlers who lived in relative poverty in
cabaña
huts on the flood
plains and riverbanks around Belém and on the lower Amazon riverbanks. Following years of
unrest, the pent-up hatred of generations burst in August 1835. After days of bloody fighting,
the survivors of the Belém authorities fled, leaving the
cabanos
in control. In the area around
the city many sugar mills and
fazendas
were destroyed, and their white owners put to death.
Bands of rebels roamed throughout the region, and in most settlements their arrival was
greeted by the non-white populations spontaneously joining their ranks, looting and killing.
The rebellion was doomed almost from the start, however. Although the leaders attempted to
form some kind of revolutionary government, they never had any real programme, nor did they
succeed in controlling their own followers. A
British ship
became embroiled in the rebellion in
October 1835, when it arrived unwittingly with a cargo of arms the authorities had ordered
before their hasty departure a couple of months previously. The crew were killed and their
cargo confiscated. Five months later, a British naval force arrived demanding compensation
from the rebels for the killings and the lost cargo. The leader of the
cabanos
, Eduardo Angelim,
met the British captain and refused any sort of compromise; British trade was now threatened,
and the squadron bombarded and blockaded Belém. In May 1836 a force of 2500 Brazilian
soldiers under the command of
Francisco d'Andrea
drove the rebels from Belém.
Mopping-up operations continued for years, and by the time the Cabanagem Rebellion was
completely over and all isolated pockets of armed resistance had been eradicated, some 30,000
people are estimated to have died - almost a third of the region's population at that time.
