Where to Stay in Salvador, Bahia

What is Salvador known for?

Salvador is recognised across Brazil and beyond it for those three, and the African inheritance that runs through the city's food, its rhythms and its religious life has made it a centre of Afro-Brazilian culture. The Afro-Brazilian Museum sets that out directly. Age is the other claim: founded in 1549 as the seat of the General Government of Brazil, Salvador counts among the oldest cities in the Americas.

What are the main landmarks in Salvador?

Salvador leaves a long list of landmarks. São Marcelo Fort stands out in the water, the Cruz Caída and the Monument to the City of Salvador mark the old ground, and the Church and Convent of Our Lady of the Conception of Lapa, the Parish Church of Our Lady of Pilar and Saint Lucy and the Relógio de São Pedro carry the colonial fabric. Museums are the other half.

The Afro-Brazilian Museum, the Bahia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia and the Museum of Sacred Art head a set that also holds the Fundação Pierre Verger.

What is the history of Salvador?

The date is 1549. Tomé de Sousa founded Salvador in that year to seat the General Government of Brazil, an instrument of the Portuguese Empire, and the city became the first capital of Colonial Brazil. It counts among the oldest cities in the Americas.

The Portuguese Empire ran Brazil from here. The colonial centuries left the churches, the forts and the great houses the old quarter still shows, among them the Church and Convent of Our Lady of the Conception of Lapa, São Marcelo Fort, the House of the Seven Deaths and the House of the Seven Lamps. Africa shaped the rest.

African influence runs through the cuisine, the music and the religious life of Salvador, which is why the city is treated as a centre of Afro-Brazilian culture and why the Afro-Brazilian Museum and the Fundação Pierre Verger both stand here. The Republic left its own marks. The Memorial dos Governadores Republicanos da Bahia records the state's republican governors, the City Museum of Salvador keeps the municipal record, and the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology of the Federal University of Bahia reaches back past the Portuguese entirely.

Where is Salvador?

The Atlantic sets one boundary. Salvador stands on the coast of Bahia, within the Zona da Mata, and its municipal territory is compact beside the reach of the state it governs. Water is on one side, Bahia on the other.

São Marcelo Fort sits out in the water off the old city, which is the plainest sign of how much of Salvador's life has faced the sea rather than the interior.

What is the climate of Salvador?

No month here turns cold. Salvador sits in the tropical band on an exposed Atlantic shore, and the sea air crossing the city keeps humidity high and the range between months narrow, so no season reads as winter. The equator lies to the north.

Being south of it, Bahia takes its warmest weather around the turn of the year, and the mildest stretch falls while the northern hemisphere is at its hottest.

How do you get to Salvador?

Salvador is the hub, not the spur. As the capital of Bahia the city is where the state's long-distance links converge, and arrivals from the rest of Brazil come in here before they scatter down the coast or inland. The sea route is the oldest.

Ships have reached this shore since the Portuguese Empire seated its government here in 1549, and São Marcelo Fort still stands out in the water off the old city.