The most unusual and beautiful cities in Brazil
But there are few old cities that have retained the architectural style characteristic of the past eras. In most Brazilian cities, the modern style is familiar to us. We will tell in this article about four Brazilian cities where original architectural culture has been preserved.
Olinda
Olinda City in Brazil
The city is located on the Atlantic coast of Brazil. The country from 1500 to 1822 was a Portuguese colony, Olinda is one of the first cities founded by Portuguese colonizers in Brazilian land. The Portuguese colonial style that is rarely found in world architecture has been preserved here. This style is characterized by a combination of bright colors, an abundance of stucco and other decor. By the colonial style built many buildings in Olinda, Catholic churches. The museums, and there are six of them in Olinda, including a very interesting Puppet Museum, are also located in old mansions.
Numerous public gardens and parks create in this quiet town a unique atmosphere of romanticism. And the ancient fort of St. Francis, on the contrary, looks warlike and impregnable. Olinda’s urban development in 1982 was included by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site.
BLUMENAU
City of Blumenau in Brazil
The city of Blumenau was founded in 1850 by immigrants from Germany. This circumstance left an imprint on its architectural appearance. In this city with a German name (the founder of the German doctor Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau is considered), the buildings of the modern building are side by side with small peaked houses, redrawn with straight lines of half-timbered structures, with turrets and spiers. This style is characteristic of German cities and looks quite unexpectedly in the Brazilian subtropics. But Oktoberferst, a traditional German holiday of beer, looks very organic against the background of typically German architecture and annually gathers up to 700 thousand tourists.
Paraty
City of Paraty in Brazil
This town on the Atlantic coast was founded by the Portuguese in 1630 on the site of an Indian settlement. It is considered the smallest Brazilian city in which the colonial architectural style has been preserved. The influence of this style is noticeable not only in the architecture of the three city churches, the oldest of which is the temple of Igreus de Santa Rita, was built in 1722, but even in modest houses under the tiled roofs on narrow city streets. These houses were built in the days when Portugal actively mined and exported gold from Brazil.
Many tourists come to Paraty only in order to plunge into these ancient streets into the atmosphere of a real port Latin American town of the 17th century, which keeps many secrets of the gold industry that is very dangerous in the era of pirates and corsairs.
ORU-PRETU
Ouro Preto City in Brazil
This city in eastern Brazil is one of the few in Latin America where Baroque architecture has been preserved. The mountainous relief of Ouro-Preto gives buildings in this fancy old European style an additional flavor and beauty. The ancient buildings are concentrated around Tiradentes Square and the monument to the national hero of Brazil, Joaquin Jose da Silva Chaviere. This is the town hall, the building of the former city court and the governor’s house, in both now there are museums. The rest of the Baroque buildings are located on streets radially diverging from the square.
The only modern building in the historic center of Ouro Preto is the hotel of the same name, designed by the world-famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. The architectural monuments of Ouro Preto are patronized by UNESCO as part of the world cultural heritage.
