Salvador
— a city that keeps two cities, one above the other.
Not only on a wall.
“The first capital of Brazil, set on a bluff above the Baía de Todos os Santos. The old city splits in two: the Cidade Alta on the ridge, the Cidade Baixa along the harbour, joined by the green art-deco shaft of the Elevador Lacerda. The pastel façades of Pelourinho catch sun. Drums carry from a candomblé terreiro you cannot see.
Salvador, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Salvador is the capital of Bahia state and the third largest city in Brazil, set on a peninsula above the Baía de Todos os Santos on the Atlantic coast. Tomé de Sousa founded the city in 1549 as the first colonial capital of Portuguese Brazil, a role it held until 1763 when the seat moved to Rio de Janeiro. The historic centre, Pelourinho, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985 for the density of its sixteenth and seventeenth century colonial architecture. The Cidade Alta sits on a 71-metre bluff above the Cidade Baixa.
The Igreja e Convento de São Francisco, completed in 1755, holds one of the most concentrated displays of Portuguese baroque in the Americas. Its interior carries an estimated 800 kilograms of gold leaf across carved cedar and jacarandá, applied through the eighteenth century. The Pelourinho district preserves more than 800 colonial buildings on its steep cobbled streets, painted in the saturated pastels that became the district's signature after the 1990s restoration funded in part by UNESCO and the state of Bahia.
Salvador's Carnival draws more than two million people across six days each February and is among the largest street parties measured anywhere. The trios elétricos, long sound-trucks first introduced in 1950, move through corridors named Barra-Ondina and Campo Grande. Earlier in February, on the second day, the city honours Iemanjá at the beach of Rio Vermelho: fishermen carry offerings of flowers and perfume out into the bay at dawn. Both events sit deep inside the city's Afro-Brazilian religious year.