Brazil · Bahia · Salvador
Imbuí, Salvador — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Imbuí is a residential bairro of Salvador, Bahia, on the inland flank of Avenida Luís Viana Filho, the Paralela, crossed by Avenida Jorge Amado.
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Where to stay in Imbuí
Where the beds are, and what that means for the visit.
Imbuí is housing rather than hotels. Apartment towers rise over a working layer of schools, clinics and small shopping centres, and Salvador keeps its visitor beds in other quarters. Booking here suits business along the Paralela and study at the state university.
A 2016 survey by the newspaper Correio ranked the bairro fourth in the city for rent, which is the sort of standing that fills flats rather than hotel rooms. Avenida Jorge Amado carries the shopfronts. The shore begins next door in Boca do Rio, where the rio das Pedras comes out, and Costa Azul carries the seafront hotels a little further along.
Streets such as Rua Padre Casimiro Quiroga are the ordinary texture in between.
Few places to stay in Imbuí — most visitors book in Salvador nearby.
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About Imbuí
What are the main landmarks in Imbuí?
The bairro's museum sits on Avenida Jorge Amado: the Museu de Ciência e Tecnologia da Bahia, the science and technology collection kept by the Universidade do Estado da Bahia, whose postal address falls on the Imbuí stretch of that avenue. The museum dates from 1979. Shopping Imbuí Plaza stands further along the same road, the best known of a run of small commercial centres, the Caboatã and the Centro Comercial Imbuí among them, that supply the neighbourhood's shopfronts.
The metro stop carrying the name is not inside it: Estação Imbuí is roughly 800 m north-west, on the far side of the Paralela, on a street the postal registry files under Narandiba.
What is the history of Imbuí?
Bolandeiras was the earlier name, and the ground under it was dunes. Old Tupi gives the present name two readings, river of snakes or river of the imbu tree, both built on the same word for river. The first condominiums date from 1978.
They went up along the Paralela, the Moradas do Imbuí and the Parque Residencial Vivendas among them, and the first people to move in came largely from the petrochemical pole at Camaçari. Verticalisation came later, as far as a 26-storey tower. The Complexo Viário Imbuí-Narandiba opened across 2014, three one-way viaducts over the Paralela with two of them feeding Imbuí, built in 17 months for 95 million reais.
Estação Imbuí followed on 23 May 2017.
Where is Imbuí?
The rio das Pedras begins here. The rio Cascão and the rio Saboeiro meet at the head of Avenida Jorge Amado, and the culverted channel they form runs down the avenue and on through Boca do Rio to the Atlantic at that bairro's beach. Narandiba lies across the Paralela to the north-west, Pituaçu to the north-east and Costa Azul to the south-west; Salvador delimited all of them by Lei 9.278 in September 2017.
Common questions
What is the best area to stay in Imbuí?
Imbuí: visitors with business on the Paralela or at the state university. Elsewhere in Salvador: travellers who want the beach or the old city.
More areas in Salvador
Updated October 2026