Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Colonial capital
With Bahia the centre of Portugal's new Brazilian colony, progress in Rio was slow,
and only in the 1690s, when gold was discovered in neighbouring Minas Gerais, did
the city's fortunes look up, as it became the control and taxation centre for the gold
trade. During the seventeenth century, sugar brought new wealth, but despite being
a prosperous entrepôt, the city saw little development. However, Rio's strategic
importance grew because of Portugal's struggle with Spain over territories to the
south, and in 1763 it replaced Bahia (Salvador) as Brazil's capital.
By the eighteenth century, the majority of Rio's inhabitants were
African
slaves.
Miscegenation became commonplace, and almost nothing in Rio remained untouched
by African customs, beliefs and behaviour - a state of affairs that clearly influences
today's city, with its mix of Afro-Brazilian music, spiritualist cults and cuisine.
In March 1808, having fled before the advance of Napoleon Bonaparte's forces
during the Peninsular War,
Dom João VI
of Portugal arrived in Rio, bringing with him
an astounding ten thousand nobles, ministers, priests and servants of the royal court.
So enamoured of Brazil was he that after Napoleon's defeat in 1815 he declined to
return to Portugal, proclaiming Rio, instead of Lisbon, the capital of the greatest
colonial empire
of the age. During Dom João's reign, the Enlightenment came to Rio,
the city's streets were paved and lit, and it acquired a new prosperity centred on
coffee
production
. Royal patronage allowed the arts and sciences to flourish. Yet behind the
imperial gloss, Rio was still mostly a slum of dark, airless habitations, intermittently
scourged by outbreaks of yellow fever, and with an economy reliant upon
slavery
.
1
Modern city
In the late nineteenth century, Rio started to develop as a modern city: trams and
trains replaced sedans, the first sewerage system was inaugurated in 1864, a telegraph
link to London was established and a tunnel was excavated that opened the way to
Copacabana, as people left the crowded centre and looked for new living space. Rio
went through a period of
urban reconstruction
, all but destroying the last vestiges of
its colonial design. The city was torn apart by a period of frenzied building between
1900 and 1910, its monumental splendour modelled on the
belle époque
of Paris with
new public buildings, grand avenues, libraries and parks embellishing the city.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Rio enjoyed international renown, buttressed by
Hollywood images presented by the likes of
Carmen Miranda
and the patronage of the
first-generation jet-set. As the nation's commercial centre, a new wave of modernization
swept the city. Even the removal of the country's political administration to the new
federal capital of Brasília in 1960 and the economic supremacy of São Paulo did
nothing to discourage the developers. Today, with the centre rebuilt so many times, the
interest of most visitors lies not in Rio's architectural heritage but firmly in the
beaches
to the south of the city centre, in an area called the Zona Sul. For more than seventy
years, these strips of sand have been Rio's heart and soul, providing a constant source of
recreation and income for
cariocas
. In stark contrast, Rio's
favelas
(see box, pp.84-85),
clinging precariously to the hillsides of the Zona Sul and across large expanses of the
Zona Norte, show another side to the city, saying much about the divisions within it.
Although not exclusive to the state capital, these slums seem all the more harsh in Rio
because of the abundance and beauty that lie right next to them.
Centro
Much of historical Rio is concentrated in
Centro
, the commercial and historic centre
of Rio, and, though the elegance of its colonial and Neoclassical architecture is now
overshadowed by towering o
ce buildings, it hasn't yet been swamped. The area's street
grid is cut by two main arteries at right angles to each other:
Avenida Presidente Vargas
and
Avenida Rio Branco
. You'll find you can tour the centre fairly easily on foot, but
