Salvador’s Pelourinho · The Gold Church and the Cobbled Streets

Salvador was Brazil’s first capital, and Pelourinho is its old town: coloured Portuguese buildings, cobbled streets and a dozen or more churches packed onto a single slope.

The Church of São Francisco is covered inside in gold leaf, said to be gold collected from the mines in colonial times; the same district is where enslaved people were landed and traded, and it is now a centre of Black culture and drumming.

There is music here at night. The old town’s saying goes: by day look at the gold, by night listen to the drums.

Historical Mysteries / Salvador · Brazil / 1549