Recife travel guide

Top 10 sights in Recife

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1

   Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue

   The first synagogue in the Americas, founded about 1636 during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco, when Jews could worship openly here as nowhere else in the New World. Its foundations and mikveh were excavated in the 2000s and it reopened as a museum on Rua do Bom Jesus.

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2. 

   2© User:David Moraes de Andrade, cropped by User:Dornicke · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Ricardo Brennand Institute

   A cultural institute founded in 2002 by the collector Ricardo Brennand, holding the largest collection of edged weapons in the world and the fullest set of Frans Post's Brazilian landscapes anywhere. Its buildings are a mock castle in a large park.

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3. 

   3© Sandro Helmann · CC BY 2.0

   Boa Viagem

   A beachfront district in the wealthy south of Recife, of high-rise flats along a long white beach. A reef close inshore forms natural pools at low tide; shark attacks since 1992 mean swimming beyond it is prohibited.

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4. 

   4© Rodrigojordy · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica and Convent of Nossa Senhora do Carmo

   The Carmelite church of Recife, begun in 1665 and finished over the following century. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, to whom it is dedicated, is also the patroness of the city, and the interior carries heavy Baroque gilding above a convent that still functions.

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5. 

   5© Lais Castro · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Basilica of Our Lady of the Rock, Recife

   A basilica in central Recife dedicated to Our Lady of Penha, the patron of the city, in a building of the early twentieth century. Its Marian devotion draws processions each September.

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6. 

   6© Prefeitura de Olinda from Brasil · CC BY 2.0

   Basilica and Monastery of St. Benedict, Olinda

   A Benedictine church and monastery at Olinda founded in 1586, whose gilded high altar of the 1780s in Brazilian baroque was shown at the Guggenheim in New York in 1993. The first abolition of slavery in Brazil was proclaimed from this church in 1889.

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7. 

   7

   Capela Dourada

   The Chapel of the Novices, built between 1696 and 1724 within the Franciscan convent of Santo Antonio and lined throughout in gilded carved cedar. It ranks among the finest Baroque interiors in Brazil, and a museum of religious art adjoins it.

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8. 

   8© Hansfotos · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Co-Cathedral of St. Peter of Clerics, Recife

   A baroque church begun in 1728 at the head of the Patio de Sao Pedro, its facade crowded with sculpture and its ceiling painted by Joao de Deus Sepulveda. Now co-cathedral of the archdiocese, it stands at the centre of Recife's restored old quarter.

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9. 

   9© denalidog - Alan · CC BY 2.0

   Recife Brazil Temple

   A Latter-day Saints temple in Recife, announced in January 1995 and dedicated in December 2000. Only members in good standing enter beyond the lobby.

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10. 

    10© Leandro Bezerra Paris · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Forte de São João Batista do Brum

    A fort at the mouth of the harbour, begun by the Dutch in 1629 during their occupation of Pernambuco and completed by the Portuguese after 1654. It is a five-pointed masonry fort and now holds an army museum.

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1. 

   1© Portal da Copa/ME · CC BY 3.0 br

   Bairro do Recife

   The historic quarter on the island where the city began, laid out under Dutch rule in the seventeenth century and rebuilt in the 1990s. Rua do Bom Jesus, once the street of the Jews, is its axis, and Carnival and weekend music fill it.

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2. 

   2© Marcelo258 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Mirabilandia

   An amusement park at Olinda outside Recife on 57,000 square metres, one of the larger parks in northeastern Brazil, with roller coasters and a water park.

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3. 

   3

   Friborg Palace

   The palace John Maurice of Nassau built between 1640 and 1643 as his residence in Dutch Brazil, with two towers, a zoo and a botanical garden — the first observatory in the southern hemisphere stood in it. It was demolished after the Dutch left; excavated remains lie beneath a later building.

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4. 

   4© Elvis Boaventura · CC BY 3.0

   Olinda Cathedral

   The cathedral of the archdiocese of Olinda and Recife, founded in 1540 on the hill at Olinda and rebuilt after the Dutch burned the town in 1631. The terrace in front looks over the whole of Olinda to Recife's towers in the distance.

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5. 

   5© Raul from Recife, Brasil · CC BY 2.0

   Palácio do Campo das Princesas

   The seat of the Pernambuco state executive in Recife, built in the eighteenth century as the governor's residence and given its present neoclassical form in the nineteenth. The gardens were laid out by Burle Marx.

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6. 

   6© Lyon Cristiano · CC BY 2.0

   Forte de São Tiago das Cinco Pontas

   Built by the Dutch in 1630 as the five-pointed Fort Frederik Hendrik, guarding the approach to Mauritsstad. The Portuguese retook Recife in 1654 and pulled the earthwork down in 1677, replacing it with the masonry fort that now holds the city museum.

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7. 

   7© BergCarlos · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Church of Our Lady of the Conception of the Military

   An eighteenth-century church built by a confraternity of soldiers in central Recife, whose painted ceiling shows the reconquest of Pernambuco from the Dutch. It is among the richest baroque interiors in the city.

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8. 

   8© Lais Castro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Museu do Estado de Pernambuco

   The state museum of Pernambuco, in a nineteenth-century mansion on Avenida Rui Barbosa, with about twelve thousand objects — colonial furniture, painting, and Frans Post's work from the Dutch period. Its ethnographic section covers the sugar plantations.

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9. 

   9© Eric Bem dos Santos · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Dois Irmãos State Park

   A state park in Recife holding a remnant of Atlantic forest inside the city, with a zoo and the nineteenth-century reservoirs that supplied the city's water. Marmosets and sloths live in the surviving forest.

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10. 

    10© Nathalia Verony · CC BY 2.0

    Mercado de São José

    A public market of 1875 in Recife, assembled from cast-iron components shipped from France, and one of the earliest prefabricated iron buildings in Brazil. Herbs, religious goods and cooked food are sold under its span.

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