Brazil (Salvador & Baía de Todos os Santos)

Órale, okay — Salvador. Listen, if you only do ONE Brazilian city, do this one. I was in São Paulo for a wedding in 2023 and tagged a week onto the front of the trip to head north and honestly it was the highlight of the whole continent for me. Salvador is loud, layered, brilliant, exhausting, and probably the most musically alive city I've ever been to.

[IMAGE: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1612270043282-aebd13c1d4e7?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop | The colourful colonial facades of Pelourinho in Salvador's old town, with cobbled streets sloping down toward the Bay of All Saints]

What Salvador is

Salvador da Bahia, the capital of Bahia state, sits on the eastern shore of the Baía de Todos os Santos — the Bay of All Saints — on Brazil's northeastern coast. About 3 million people in the metro area. Was the first capital of colonial Brazil from 1549 to 1763 before Rio took over. Today it's the cultural heart of Afro-Brazil — over 80% of the population has African heritage, the legacy of being the entry point of the transatlantic slave trade for centuries. Every musical tradition, food, religion, dance form here has roots in West and Central Africa, blended with Portuguese and Indigenous Tupi-Guarani influences. The result is a city that sounds and tastes and moves unlike anywhere else.

UNESCO listed Pelourinho (the colonial old town) in 1985, which finally pushed the city to restore the colourful baroque facades and the 17th-century churches. Before that, the historic centre had been seriously decaying for decades.

The neighbourhoods you'll spend time in

Pelourinho (the historic centre, on the upper plateau called Cidade Alta). Cobbled streets, pastel-painted Portuguese colonial houses, baroque churches, capoeira playing on every other corner. The famous photographs are from here — Largo do Pelourinho and Terreiro de Jesus.

Santo Antônio Além do Carmo — the next neighbourhood north of Pelô, less polished but very lively, full of small bars and music venues. This is where the proper Bahian nightlife lives.

Comércio (lower town, on the bay shore). Where the cargo port and the famous Mercado Modelo are. You take the Elevador Lacerda — a 1930s public elevator — between upper and lower town. Costs literally 30 centavos.

Barra — the modern beach neighbourhood at the southern tip of the peninsula. Where most middle-class tourists stay. Beach, lighthouse, cafes. Less atmospheric than Pelô but easier and safer at night.

Itapuã — further south down the Atlantic coast. Quieter beach neighbourhood, fishing village vibe, where the song "Samba do Avião" mentions when Tom Jobim sings about flying back from Rio.

What to actually do

The hits, with my honest take on each:

Walk Pelourinho slowly. Start at Praça da Sé and just wander north into the labyrinth. Pop into the Igreja e Convento de São Francisco — this is THE photo, a Portuguese baroque church covered floor-to-ceiling in gold leaf. The 17th-century Portuguese colonisers basically melted down most of Brazil's gold to coat the interior of this one church. Mental. 10 reais entry.

Catch a capoeira show. Capoeira is the Afro-Brazilian martial-art-disguised-as-dance that the enslaved Africans developed here in the 16th century. Every Tuesday and Saturday night there are public rodas (circles) at the Forte de Santo Antônio Além do Carmo and at the Mercado Modelo. Free. Stay for an hour minimum. The atmosphere — the berimbau instrument's distinctive twang, the call-and-response singing, the players moving like water — is hypnotic.

Olodum on Tuesday night. This one's huge. Olodum is the legendary Afro-Brazilian percussion group — the ones Paul Simon recorded "The Obvious Child" with for Graceland — and they do a free public rehearsal-and-show every Tuesday night in Pelourinho, on the Largo do Pelourinho square, from around 8pm. Hundreds of people show up to dance. The drumming is properly seismic. You feel it through your sternum. If you do nothing else in Salvador, do this. It's the single most cathartic live-music experience I've had outside a festival.

Mercado Modelo. Big indoor crafts market on the lower town waterfront. Tourist-aimed but the upper-floor restaurants overlooking the bay are decent (the moqueca de peixe at Camafeu de Oxóssi is a classic). Buy a small piece of lacework or a hammock or a percussion instrument. Bargain.

Itapagipe Peninsula and the Igreja do Senhor do Bonfim. Small church on the north end of the city, the most important religious site for Afro-Brazilian syncretic Catholicism (the Virgin Mary is here associated with the African deity Iemanjá). Pilgrims tie coloured ribbons to the church gates. The famous fitas do Bonfim wristbands you'll see all over Bahia come from here.

A boat trip across Baía de Todos os Santos. The bay is gorgeous and full of small islands. Day-cruises from Mercado Modelo go to Ilha de Itaparica (about an hour by ferry, slow boat, beach village vibe) or the smaller Ilha dos Frades. Around 100-200 reais for the day depending on the operator.

The food

Bahian cooking is one of Brazil's great regional cuisines and it does not pretend to be anything else. Dishes you have to try:

Acarajé. The signature street food. A black-eyed pea fritter, deep-fried in dendê (palm) oil, split open and stuffed with caruru (okra paste), vatapá (creamy peanut-shrimp paste), tomato salsa, and dried shrimp. The famous Acarajé da Cira at Largo do Santo Antônio is the canonical version, but every baiana de acarajé in her white-and-lace traditional outfit on a corner is selling a good one. About 15 reais.

Moqueca. Fish or prawn stew cooked in coconut milk, dendê oil, peppers, onions, coriander, tomato. Served in a clay pot, brought to your table bubbling. The Bahian version is heavier on the dendê than the Espírito Santo version. Around 80-120 reais a serving — feeds two easily. Restaurante Maria Mata Mouro near Pelourinho does it well.

Vatapá. The creamy peanut-cashew-shrimp paste that goes inside acarajé but also gets served as a main with rice. Comfort food.

Bobó de camarão. Prawns in a thick manioc-and-coconut sauce. Lighter than moqueca, no less excellent.

Cocada. Coconut sweets sold by vendors with little carts. Get them from an actual baiana, not from the fancy tourist shops.

Drink fresh coconut water from a guy with a machete on the beach, drink caipirinhas at sunset, drink the local beer (Sudoeste) cold. Don't bother with imported wine; it's overpriced and not the local thing.

Carnaval (if you can go for it)

Salvador's Carnaval is genuinely one of the world's great festivals and the lesser-known one compared to Rio. It's a six-day street party in February, organised around trios elétricos — massive trucks carrying full bands that drive slowly through the city followed by tens of thousands of dancing fans. Costs from 0 reais (walk in the pipoca, the popular crowd, free) up to thousands (buy a bloco wristband to dance behind a particular band's truck). I haven't done it yet — going in 2026 with my cousin Rocío — but every Brazilian I've talked to says Salvador's Carnaval is the real one, more African, more local, less commercialised than Rio's.

When to visit

The whole year is warm and humid. December-March is the rainy season but the storms are usually short tropical bursts that clear quickly. April-June is excellent — fewer tourists, dry, mild. Carnaval is in February (varies). July-August is dry and busy with school-holiday tourism. September-November is the goldilocks: dry, quiet, perfect.

I went in late August. Was perfect.

Where to stay

Stay in Pelourinho if you want to be in it. The boutique pousadas inside the historic centre are the most atmospheric — Pousada do Boqueirão, Pousada Casas do Brasil. Around 350-600 reais a night ($70-120). Pelourinho can feel sketchy at night to first-timers; in reality it's been heavily policed since the UNESCO designation and walking with a group is fine.

Stay in Barra if you want easier and safer evenings (more Western-style, more convenient, less character).

Avoid: Cidade Baixa hotels — quiet at night in a way that doesn't feel right for solo travellers.

A note on safety

Salvador has a reputation. Like a lot of Brazilian cities, the petty crime situation is real — pickpocketing in crowds, snatched phones if you're walking distracted with one out, occasional muggings in quieter streets at night. Sensible precautions apply: don't flash valuables, no expensive jewellery, take Ubers after dark, leave the passport in the hotel safe. I had no issues at all over a week, but I was careful. Compared to the worst of Brazilian cities, Salvador is fine; compared to small-town Mexico or Lisbon, you do need to keep your wits.

Combining the trip

Most travellers pair Salvador with a beach week somewhere up the Bahian coast — Morro de São Paulo (a car-free island town), Praia do Forte, Itacaré. Or with a few days inland in the Chapada Diamantina national park. Or with Rio for the architectural-and-beach contrast. The Brazil country guide covers the wider routes month by month, and the South America category page collects more from across the continent. If you'd rather have someone arrange the logistics, tours in Brazil lists various Salvador-anchored multi-day options.

Official sources

Visit Brasil has practical visitor info. UNESCO's World Heritage page for the Historic Centre of Salvador has the full inscription record and is a useful primer on why the colonial-and-African layering of the city matters at a global level.

Last word

What a vibe. Honestly. Salvador has stayed with me longer than any other Brazilian city. The sheer physical sensation of standing in the crowd at an Olodum show on a Tuesday night with the heat coming off the cobblestones and the drums going through your chest and the entire square moving as one organism — that's not something you get in many places. Rocío would lose her mind here. Going back with her in February for Carnaval. Cannot wait. Five nights minimum. Stay in Pelô. Eat everything. Trust me on this one.