Key facts

• Convento de São Francisco (1585): the first Franciscan convent established in Brazil and one of the finest examples of colonial religious architecture in the Americas — founded in 1585 on the Cruzeiro hill by the Spanish Franciscan Friar Melchior de Santa Catarina, the convent complex includes the church of Nossa Senhora das Neves (with its Baroque façade of pale yellow stucco and an interior of 18th-century azulejo tiles from Portugal depicting the life of Saint Francis — the finest azulejo cycle in Brazil outside Salvador da Bahia), the cloister (an 18th-century arcaded courtyard with its original Portuguese paving), and the third-floor chapel of São Roque (with a view over the roofscape of Olinda to the Atlantic and to Recife); the Franciscan Museum within the convent has a collection of colonial religious art including 17th-century Flemish paintings brought during the Dutch occupation
• Se Cathedral (1537, rebuilt 18th century): the oldest cathedral in Brazil — the first church was built on the Se hill in 1537, two years after the town’s founding; it was burned by the Dutch in 1631 and rebuilt multiple times; the current structure (largely 18th century) is the most architecturally austere of Olinda’s churches, which has been read as a deliberate reaction to the ornate Baroque decoration of the town’s other churches; the Se hill gives the most panoramic view of the historic centre (the classic postcard view of Olinda — church towers and coloured façades cascading down to the sea), particularly at sunset; adjacent to the cathedral are the remains of the palace of the Bishops of Pernambuco (now the Palácio do Bispo, used for cultural events)
• Dutch occupation and the Blaeu Atlas: the 24-year Dutch West India Company occupation of Pernambuco (1630–1654) was the most sustained European challenge to Portuguese American empire and profoundly shaped north-eastern Brazil — the Dutch governor Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1637–1644) turned Recife into the most sophisticated European city in the Americas, commissioning the first systematic natural history of the Americas (by Willem Piso and Georg Marcgraf, 1648), the first portrait paintings by a European artist in the Americas (Franz Post’s Brazilian landscapes, now in major European museums), and cartographic surveys that produced the most accurate maps of the Brazilian coast; Olinda was burned by the Dutch in 1631 (they saw it as a strategic threat to their control of Recife below) and rebuilt by the Portuguese after the Dutch were expelled in 1654; the rebuilt Olinda (1654–1720) is what the UNESCO inscription protects
• Olinda Carnival — the street Carnival: the most participatory Carnival in Brazil and one of the largest street festivals in the world, drawing approximately 2 million people over the 5-day Carnival period (the Saturday before Ash Wednesday through Fat Tuesday) — unlike Rio’s Carnival (focused on the samba school parades in the Sambódromo) or Salvador’s Carnival (dominated by axé music and trio eléctrico sound trucks), Olinda’s Carnival is centred on the historic streets of the old town; the characteristic figures are the giant puppet carriers (bonecos gigantes — papier-mâché figures 3–5 metres tall, carried through the streets and representing local politicians, artists, and cultural figures since the 1930s) and the frevo — the distinctive Pernambuco musical-dance tradition (a syncopated brass band music derived from European march and Caribbean maxixe, with acrobatic dance movements using small umbrellas as balance props; UNESCO inscribed frevo as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2012)
• Oficina Cerâmica Francisco Brennand (outside Olinda): 15 km from Olinda in Recife’s western Várzea neighbourhood, the ceramic workshop and museum of Francisco Brennand (1927–2019 — the most important Brazilian artist of the 20th century after Cândido Portinari) occupies a former tile factory site on approximately 50 hectares of tropical forest planted with Brennand’s ceramic sculptures (thousands of them, ranging from intimate vessels to monumental erotic phallic columns); the ceramic works in the atelier and surrounding garden, drawing on both the azulejo tile tradition of Portugal and Brennand’s own symbolic universe, constitute one of the most extraordinary artist’s environments in the world; free admission to the grounds (appointment required)
• Heritage: UNESCO World Heritage Site, Historic Town of Olinda, inscribed 1982
• GPS: 8.0089° S, 34.8553° W