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Maranhão Northeast Region |
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The capital of Maranhão was founded in 1612 and
is the latest town to be listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Beaches surround the town, such as those at Calhau, Ponta D'Areia and São
Marcos, where there are the ruins of the eighteenth century São Marcos
Fort. The city's greatest era of prosperity was reached in the second half
of the eighteenth century, when cotton exports were at their height.
During this period, the province of Marina furnished a considerable
part of the revenues of the Royal Treasury, beating various other
provinces of the Portuguese empire. In the same period São Luís became the capital of Maranhão, with direct
links to the Portuguese court. A
São Luís has been the birthplace of some important names in Brazilian literature, such as the poet Gonçalves Dias (1823-1864); the writer Graça Aranha (1868-1931), a founding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and member of the Modernist Movement in 1922; the novelist Aluísio Azevedo (1857-1913) and his brother, the dramatist Arthur de Azevedo (1855-1908). The extensive literary output of local writers, and of writers from other regions of the country, is preserved in the Josué Montello Cultural Center.
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great deal happened between its apogee
and its economic decline, and some of the story can be discovered in areas
like Praia Grande, a historic center listed by the National Heritage
Department. The main tourist attractions of the city are contained in an
area of 107 km2, with buildings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth
centuries. The capital has more than 3,000 listed buildings, most of them
with facades decorated with the glazed tiles typical of the Portuguese
colonial style. Among them are the Palácio dos Leões (Lion Palace),
which until 1615 was a fort which protected the then capital of
Equinoctial France, as São Luís was called under French rule; the
Catedral da Sé, built by the Jesuits in 1726; the church of Carmo, one of
the oldest in the city, constructed in 1627; and the Arthur Azevedo
Theatre, built between 1815 and 1817 and thought to be the first theatre
to be erected in a Brazilian capital.