Manaus
Capital Of Amazonas And The Rubber Boom City Of The Amazon, Founded Around The 1669 Fort Of SãO José Da Barra Do Rio Negro; Home Of The Teatro Amazonas · Manaus, Amazonas
Manaus is a city of about two million people on the Rio Negro, deep in the Amazon and reached from the rest of Brazil mostly by plane or by river boat. It grew from a small Portuguese fort founded around 1669, and for a few decades around 1900 it was one of the richest cities in the world, when rubber tapped from wild trees in the forest paid for electric trams, iron markets and mansions. The great relic of that boom is the Teatro Amazonas, a pink opera house finished in 1896, with a tiled dome and a painted interior; it still stages concerts and an annual opera festival. Around it, the Largo de São Sebastião is the pleasant heart of the old centre. The rest of downtown is busier and rougher: a working river port with a floating dock, the iron Adolpho Lisboa market, crowded shopping streets and faded boom-era buildings. The city is also a place to eat river fish and Amazon fruit, to walk the Ponta Negra riverfront at sunset, and to climb the MUSA canopy tower. Most visitors pass through on the way to a jungle lodge; a day or two in the city itself is well spent.
Largo de São Sebastião and Centro, Manaus, AM, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil
The city runs all year, but each sight keeps its own pattern. The Teatro Amazonas offers guided tours on most days in the daytime, in Portuguese and usually in English too, but it closes to tours one day a week and at short notice for rehearsals, events and maintenance; performances are in the evening and many are cheap or free, so check the programme on arrival. The Amazonas Opera Festival usually runs over several weeks in the first half of the year - confirm the dates, as they move. Museums such as the Palácio Rio Negro keep weekday and weekend hours and many close one day a week, commonly Monday. The Adolpho Lisboa market and the port market streets are liveliest early in the morning and quieten in the afternoon; much of the downtown commerce shuts on Sunday, when the centre empties and feels less safe. The MUSA botanical garden and tower open in the daytime and close in heavy storms. Ponta Negra is busiest in the evening and at weekends. River levels change the port and beaches: the floating dock rises and falls with the season, and Ponta Negra's sand shrinks at high water. Carnival and the late-June Parintins festival period fill flights and hotels, so book ahead then.