Salvador: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Salvador was the first capital of Brazil, from 1549 to 1763, and it was built on a cliff with the port below and the government above. The name of the square at the centre of the old town is Pelourinho — the whipping post — because that is what stood on it, and the city has never renamed it. More enslaved Africans were landed in Bahia than anywhere else in the Americas, and almost everything on this walk follows from that. Two and a half hours, all of it on cobbles.
A short history of Salvador
In 1549 Tomé de Sousa arrived here and built Brazil's first capital on a cliff above the Bay of All Saints. For more than 200 years Salvador was the centre of the Portuguese colony and a main port for sugar and slaves, which is the source of its strong Afro-Brazilian culture, from music to capoeira and food. In 1624 the Dutch captured it, and they were driven out a year later. In 1763 the capital was moved to Rio de Janeiro. In 1873 the Lacerda Elevator was opened, and it still links the upper and lower city today; in 1985 the Pelourinho district was declared a World Heritage Site.
The ten best sights in Salvador
1Praca da SeThe open square at the top of the old city, with the drop to the bay on one side. Street musicians in the late afternoon and a view that explains the two-level city.
2Terreiro de JesusFour churches on one square, which was the Jesuit college ground. It is the centre of the old city and the capoeira rodas happen here.
3Catedral BasilicaThe old Jesuit church, finished in 1672, with a ceiling of Portuguese timber assembled without nails and walls faced in Lisbon tiles.
4Sao FranciscoThe most heavily gilded church in Brazil. The carving was done by enslaved African craftsmen, and some of the cherubs were given deliberately distorted faces.
5Rosario dos PretosBuilt by enslaved and freed Africans over about a century, because they were not allowed into the other churches. Mass here is sung with drums.
6PelourinhoThe old upper town, and the name means whipping post — the square is where enslaved people were punished in public. It is a UNESCO site and the name was never changed.
7Largo do PelourinhoThe sloping square of painted houses that every photograph of Salvador shows. Olodum rehearse here on Tuesday night and the whole square fills.
8Elevador LacerdaA public lift of seventy-two metres joining the upper and lower cities, running since 1873 and the first urban lift in Brazil. It costs almost nothing.
9Palacio Rio BrancoThe old governor's palace on the cliff edge, rebuilt in 1919 after a naval bombardment, and free to enter for the ceiling and the view.
10Museu Afro-BrasileiroIn the old medical faculty, and the room to find holds twenty-seven carved cedar panels of the orixas by Carybe, made in 1968.
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Salvador →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Salvador:
Free walking tours in Salvador
The Upper City
Salvador was the first capital of Brazil, from 1549 to 1763, and it was built on a cliff with the port below and the government above. The name of the square at the centre of the old town is Pelourinho — the whipping post — because that is what stood on it, and the city has never renamed it. More enslaved Africans were landed in Bahia than anywhere else in the Americas, and almost everything on this walk follows from that. Two and a half hours, all of it on cobbles.
- Praca da Se · The open square at the cliff edge. A cathedral stood here from 1552 and was demolished in 1933 to widen the street for trams, which is why the square is open — the city pulled down its own oldest building for a tram line.
- Terreiro de Jesus · Four churches on one square, which was the courtyard of the Jesuit college — the first in the Americas, founded in 1549 with the city itself. The capoeira circles that form here come from a fighting art that enslaved people disguised as dance.
- Catedral Basilica · The old Jesuit church, finished in 1672. The stone was quarried in Portugal and shipped over as ballast, the ceiling is timber fitted without nails, and the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil ninety years after it was finished.
- Sao Francisco · Said to hold the most gold leaf of any church in Brazil. The carving was done by enslaved African craftsmen, and it is widely held in the city that some of the cherubs were given swollen faces and misshapen bodies deliberately, as the only protest available to them.
- Rosario dos Pretos · Enslaved and freed Africans were not admitted to the other churches, so they built their own — at night and on their own days off, over about a hundred years from 1704. Mass here is still sung with drums.
- Largo do Pelourinho · The sloping square of painted houses. By the 1980s it was derelict and dangerous; the state restored it from 1992 and moved out most of the families who lived there, which is still argued about. Olodum, the drumming group, rehearse here on Tuesday nights in public.
Down to the Water
The lower city is the port, and the port is why Salvador exists: the Bay of All Saints is the largest bay in Brazil and the Portuguese put their first capital on it in 1549. Everything moved between the two levels by rope and ramp until 1873, when a public lift was built. This walk goes down it and along the water. Two hours, and the lift costs almost nothing.
- Palacio Rio Branco · The governor's palace on the cliff edge, first built in 1549 and rebuilt in 1919 after the Brazilian navy shelled the city during a political crisis in 1912. Free to walk into.
- Elevador Lacerda · Seventy-two metres, opened in 1873 and the first urban lift in Brazil. Before it, goods and people went up the cliff on ramps; about three million journeys a year are made in it now and the fare is a few cents.
- Mercado Modelo · A craft market in the old customs house. The cellars under it were used to hold newly landed enslaved people before sale, and the market tells this rather than hiding it.
- Solar do Unhao · A sugar estate from the seventeenth century with its own chapel and quay, now the modern art museum. Sugar is what this coast was for, and the labour that cut it is the reason the population of Bahia is what it is.
- Feira de Sao Joaquim · The city's real market and nothing like the Modelo. Herbs for candomble on one side, meat and dende palm oil on the other, and it supplies most of the kitchens in Salvador.
- Bonfim · The most visited church in the city, and the clearest place to see what syncretism means here: for Catholics this is Our Lord of Bonfim, and in candomble the same figure is Oxala. The coloured ribbons tied to the railings are from here, and the washing of the steps every January is done by women of candomble.
The Point and the Shore
Salvador sits on a peninsula with the bay on one side and the open Atlantic on the other, and the lighthouse at the tip is the oldest in the Americas. This route is the city's own half: the beach it swims at, the quarter it drinks in, and the lake where eight orixas stand in the water. Two and a half hours, and the end of it is a sunset the whole city turns up for.
- Dique do Tororo · A reservoir dug in the seventeenth century, with eight sculptures of the orixas standing in the water since 1998 — Iemanja, Oxum, Xango and the rest, in the middle of a modern city, lit at night.
- Porto da Barra · A small beach inside the bay facing west, which makes it one of the very few city beaches in the world where the sun sets into the water in front of you. It is also where the first Portuguese landed in 1501.
- Farol da Barra · The lighthouse stands in a fort begun in 1583, and the light itself has worked since 1698 — the oldest lighthouse in the Americas. It marks the point where the bay ends and the open Atlantic begins, and the water changes colour at that line.
- Museu Nautico · Inside the fort, with objects raised from wrecks in the bay — including from the Sacramento, a ship that went down in 1668 and was excavated in the 1970s.
- Rio Vermelho · The quarter the city eats in. Jorge Amado lived here, and every second of February the whole neighbourhood carries gifts into the sea for Iemanja — tens of thousands of people and boats taking flowers out past the breakers.
- Largo de Santana · The square with the two best-known acaraje stands in Brazil. Acaraje is a black-eyed pea fritter fried in dende palm oil, and it began as food offered to the orixa Iansa — which is why the women who sell it wear the white dress.
Getting to Salvador and getting around
- Salvador Airport · Twenty-eight kilometres north-east along the coast road. The airport bus runs the beach route into the city and is worth taking for the drive alone.
- Rodoviaria · Buses to the whole north-east, and the overnight services are the practical way to reach Lencois and the Chapada.
- Ferry terminal · Boats to Itaparica and the islands of the bay leave from below the lower city, and the crossing is forty minutes.
- Estacao da Lapa · The main city bus interchange, and the one place where every line in Salvador can be caught.
Cheap eats in Salvador
Eight counters where Salvador eats standing, and one ingredient explains most of it: dende, the red palm oil that came from West Africa with the people who were enslaved and brought here. Acaraje is the street food — a fritter of black-eyed peas fried in dende, split and filled with dried shrimp and vatapa — and it is sold by women in white from a tray, not from a shop.
- Largo de Santana · From 4pm · about fifteen reais
- Feira de Sao Joaquim · Open 6 to 5 · a pot for two
- Mercado do Rio Vermelho · From 5pm · busiest Friday
- Mercado Modelo · Open 9 to 7, Sunday to 2
- Terreiro de Jesus · Afternoons · a few reais
- Santo Antonio · Lunch from noon
- Porto da Barra · Afternoons · cash only
- Itapua · All day · best at the weekend
Holy places in Salvador
Candomble came to Bahia with enslaved people from Yoruba, Fon and Bantu lands, and survived because its deities were matched one by one to Catholic saints — so an altar could look Catholic to an owner. It was illegal in Brazil until the 1970s and is practised openly now. These are the places where that history is visible.
- Bonfim · Free · the washing is the second Thursday of January
- Rosario dos Pretos · Mass Tuesday evening
- Museu Afro-Brasileiro · Closed Sunday
- Dique do Tororo · Free · lit after dark
- Casa do Benin · Free · closed Monday
- Cachoeira · The festival is in August
- Rio Vermelho · The second of February
Museums in Salvador
- Museu Afro-Brasileiro · Closed Sunday
- Casa do Carnaval · Open daily
- Casa de Jorge Amado · Free · closed Sunday
- MAM Bahia · Free · closed Monday
- Museu Nautico · Closed Monday
- Mercado Modelo · Closed Sunday afternoon
- Palacio Rio Branco · Free · weekdays
Parks and gardens in Salvador
- Parque da Cidade · Free · closed Monday
- Jardim Botanico · Free · closed Monday
- Dique do Tororo · Free · lit at night
- Lagoa do Abaete · Free · daylight only
- Porto da Barra · Free · sunset is the hour
- Praia do Flamengo · Free · currents are strong
- Ilha dos Frades · Boats from the ferry terminal
Live music in Salvador
- Largo do Pelourinho · Tuesday evening · free in the square
- Terreiro de Jesus · Afternoons · tip the circle
- Rio Vermelho · Thursday to Sunday
- Teatro Castro Alves · Check the season
- MAM Bahia · Saturday evening
- Forte de Santo Antonio · Evenings · check the week
- Arena Fonte Nova · Tickets at the ground
Nature and day trips near Salvador
- Baia de Todos os Santos · Boats from the terminal all day
- Ilha de Itaparica · Ferries every hour
- Praia do Forte · Hatchlings September to March
- Morro de Sao Paulo · Boats from the ferry terminal
- Cachoeira · Go with Sao Felix across the bridge
- Sao Felix · The factory takes visitors
- Santo Amaro · Saturday market
Frequently asked questions about Salvador
What is there to see in Salvador?
The top sights in Salvador are Praca da Se, Terreiro de Jesus and Catedral Basilica. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Salvador?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Salvador without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Salvador?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Salvador, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Upper City.
How do you get to Salvador and get around?
The main ways are Salvador Airport, Rodoviaria and Ferry terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Salvador, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Salvador that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Salvador for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.