Tomé de Sousa arrives in Bahia, 16th century. Solar Ferrão in Pelourinho Dutch fleet commanded by Piet Pieterszoon Hein in Salvador during the unsuccessful 1624 invasion. Salvador in 1875 during the Empire of Brazil.

Salvador lies on a small, roughly triangular peninsula that separates the Bay of All Saints, the largest bay in Brazil, from the Atlantic Ocean.[1] It was first reached by Gaspar de Lemos in 1501, just one year after Cabral's purported discovery of Brazil.[2] During his second voyage for Portugal, the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci sighted the bay on All Saints' Day (1 November) 1502 and, in honor of the date and his parish church in Florence, he named it the Bay of the Saint Savior of All the Saints.[3] The first European to settle nearby was Diogo Álvares Correia ("Caramuru"),[4] who was shipwrecked off the end of the peninsula in 1509. He lived among the Tupinambá, marrying Guaibimpara and others. In 1531, Martim Afonso de Sousa led an expedition from Mount St Paul (Morro de São Paulo)[5] and, in 1534, Francisco Pereira Coutinho, the first captain of Bahia, established the settlement of Pereira in modern Salvador's Ladeira da Barra neighborhood. Mistreatment of the Tupinambá by the settlers caused them to turn hostile and the Portuguese were forced to flee to Porto Seguro c. 1546.[6] An attempted restoration of the colony the next year ended in shipwreck and cannibalism.[7]

The present city was established as the fortress of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos ("Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints")[8][n 1] in 1549 by Portuguese settlers under Tomé de Sousa, Brazil's first governor-general.[11] It is one of the oldest cities founded by Europeans in the Americas.[12] From a cliff overlooking the Bay of All Saints,[n 2] it served as Brazil's first capital and quickly became a major port for its slave trade and sugarcane industry.[14] Salvador was long divided into an upper and a lower city, divided by a sharp escarpment some 85 meters (279 ft) high.[15] The upper city formed the administrative, religious, and primary residential districts while the lower city was the commercial center, with a port and market.

In the Roman Catholic Church, Brazil and the rest of the Portuguese Empire were initially administered as part of the Diocese of Funchal in Portugal but, in 1551, Salvador became the seat of the first Roman Catholic diocese erected in Brazil.[16] The first parish church[17] was the mud-and-thatch Church of Our Lady of Help (Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Ajuda) erected by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus),[n 3] which served as the first cathedral of the diocese until the Jesuits finished construction of the original basilica on the Terreiro de Jesus in 1553.[17][n 4] Its bishop was made independent of the Archdiocese of Lisbon at the request of King Pedro II in 1676;[20] he served as the primate of the Congo and Angola in central Africa until the elevation of the Diocese of Luanda on 13 January 1844 and its bishop still serves as the national primate and premier see (diocese) of Brazil.

In 1572, the Governorate of Brazil was divided into the separate governorates of Bahia in the north and Rio de Janeiro in the south. These were reunited as Brazil six years later, then redivided from 1607 to 1613. By that time, Portugal had become temporarily united with Spain and was ruled from Madrid by its kings. In 1621, King Philip III replaced the Governorate of Brazil with the states of Brazil, still based in Salvador and now controlling the south, and the Maranhão, which was centered on São Luís and controlled what is now northern Brazil. As Spain was then prosecuting a war against the independence of the Dutch, the Dutch East and West India companies tried to conquer Brazil from them. Salvador played a strategically vital role against Dutch Brazil, but was captured and sacked by a West India Company fleet under Jacob Willekens and Piet Hein on 10 May 1624. Johan van Dorth administered the colony before his assassination, freeing its slaves. The city was recaptured by a Luso-Spanish fleet under Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Mendoza on 1 May 1625. John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, tried to conquer the city for his country, unsuccessfully besieging it between April and May 1638.

 Monument dedicated to the heroes of the battles of Bahia's independence from Portugal in the Campo Grande Square

In 1763, the colonial administration was removed to Rio de Janeiro and elevated to a viceroyalty. Salvador remained the heart of the Recôncavo, Bahia's rich agricultural maritime district,[21] but was largely outside Brazil's early modernization. The area formed a center of royal Portuguese support against heir apparent Pedro I's declaration of independence from European Portugal on 7 September 1822. Its elites initially remained loyal to the Portuguese crown[10] while rebels from Cachoeira besieged them for a year until finally receiving Portugal's surrender of the town on 2 July 1823, which is now celebrated as Bahia Independence Day.[22] The local elite was similarly hesitant during Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca's later coup that established the republic in 1889.[10]

Owing to whales' use of the Bay of All Saints as a mating ground, Salvador became a large whaling port in the Southern Hemisphere during the 19th century but the trade had already begun to fall off by the 1870s.[9]

Under the empire and republic periods, however, the town slowly began to industrialize. In 1873, Brazil's first elevator, the powerful hydraulic Elevador Lacerda, was constructed to connect the city's upper and lower towns.[9] Having undergone several upgrades, it continues in use.[23][24] By the First World War, it was joined by a second elevator[n 5] and Salvador was connected to four railroads: the Bahia & Alagoinhas to Joazeiro, the Bahia Central, the Nazareth Tramway, and a short line to Santo Amaro.[10] Its central districts and the major suburbs of Bomfim and Victoria were served by four streetcar lines,[9][10] which had begun to electrify.[10] It also served as a port of call for most steamship lines trading between Europe and South America.[10]

In 1985, UNESCO listed the city's Pelourinho neighborhood as a World Heritage Site.[25][26] In the 1990s, a major municipal project cleaned and restored the neighborhood in order to develop it as the cultural center and heart of the city's tourist trade. The development of the Historical Center, however, involved the forced removal of thousands of working-class residents and now necessitates local and municipal events in order to attract people to the area.[27] The relocated workers, meanwhile, have encountered significant economic hardship in their new homes on the city's periphery, separated from access to work and civic amenities.[28]

In 2007, Porto da Barra Beach in Barra was named by the Guardian as the 3rd-best beach in the world.[29] In 2010, the city hosted the 12th UN Congress on Crime Prevention.[30] The city hosted the 2013 Confederations Cup and was one of the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil at its Arena Fonte Nova.[31] As part of its preparations for the World Cup, the city re-established its public transportation lines as the Salvador Metro.

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