Salvador da Bahia Is Brazil's Most Overlooked Great City

Founded in 1549 as the first capital of colonial Brazil, Salvador sits on a peninsula in the state of Bahia, split between a lower city built around its old port and an upper city, the Pelourinho, connected since 1873 by a startling art deco lift, the Elevador Lacerda. Rio gets the postcard shots and São Paulo gets the business travel, but Salvador has spent four centuries building something neither city quite has: a culture that traces back to West Africa more directly than anywhere else in Brazil, still audibly and visibly present in daily life rather than staged for visitors.

The Pelourinho's colour is not just for show

The Pelourinho's grid of steep cobbled streets and pastel 17th- and 18th-century townhouses, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, was allowed to decay for decades before a 1990s restoration brought it back from near-ruin. It remains Brazil's best-preserved colonial centre, its baroque churches, among them the gold-leaf interior of the São Francisco Church, built with labour drawn from the enslaved and free Afro-Brazilian population whose descendants' culture the district's music and food now largely represent.

Where capoeira and Candomblé come from

Capoeira, the martial art and dance hybrid developed by enslaved Africans in Brazil and now practised worldwide, traces to Salvador's streets, and open-air rodas, circles where it is played out to live berimbau music, can still be watched, and sometimes joined, around the Pelourinho most evenings. Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion that grew from Yoruba, Fon and Bantu traditions brought by enslaved people, remains centred on Salvador's terreiros, or temple houses, more than in any other Brazilian city, shaping traditions from the annual Lavagem do Bonfim washing-of-the-steps festival to the white clothing many Bahians favour on Fridays.

A food culture built on dendê oil

Bahian cooking is among Brazil's most distinct regional cuisines, built around dendê, a reddish palm oil brought from West Africa, and dishes like acarajé, black-eyed pea fritters deep-fried in it and split open for a filling of vatapá and dried shrimp, sold from street stalls run almost exclusively by baianas in traditional white dress. It bears little resemblance to the churrasco and feijoada more commonly associated with Brazilian food elsewhere in the country.

Traveller tips

• Salvador's Carnival, held in February or March depending on the year, is Brazil's second-largest after Rio's and considerably more street-based, built around trio elétrico sound trucks rather than a stadium parade.
• The Pelourinho is liveliest and safest in daylight and early evening; check current local advice before walking its edges after dark.
• Deputado Luís Eduardo Magalhães International Airport connects Salvador directly to several other Brazilian cities and a small number of international routes.
• The dry season, roughly September to March, overlaps with Bahia's warmest weather and the beach season along the coast north and south of the city.