Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia

European, African and Amerindian currents met and mixed in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil's capital from 1549 to 1763 and, from 1558, the New World's first market in enslaved Africans brought for the sugar plantations. That painful history produced an Afro-Brazilian culture without equal, set among fine Renaissance buildings and the vividly coloured, stucco-fronted houses of the old town. UNESCO inscribed Salvador's historic centre in 1985.