Cathedral Basilica of Salvador: the Jesuits’ lioz-stone church, made Brazil’s primatial cathedral when the old Sé fell to a tramway

The Primatial Cathedral Basilica of São Salvador, on the Terreiro de Jesus in the heart of the Pelourinho, did not begin as a cathedral but as the church of the Jesuit college, the Jesuits being the first to arrive with the governor Tomé de Sousa in 1549. It is the fourth church raised on the same site; the building seen today was begun in 1657 — the foundation stone laid in July — and consecrated on 27 June 1672 (some English-language sources write 1654, but that is an error: that is the date of the final expulsion of the Dutch from Pernambuco, which unblocked the work). It became a cathedral in two stages: after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1759, the church was transferred to the archbishopric by royal decree of 1765 and served as the seat from then on; then, on 7 August 1933, the old Sé Primatial — the ancient cathedral, seat of the first diocese of Brazil, erected in 1551 — was demolished to widen a tramway line, and the former Jesuit church became the definitive cathedral. The see is primatial: the archbishop of São Salvador is Primate of Brazil. It was raised to a minor basilica in 1922. The style is Mannerist, and the facade — like the whole fabric — is of lioz stone imported from Portugal; the sources report that the main stone arrived already worked from the Kingdom, as ships’ ballast. Inside, beneath the high altar, rests Mem de Sá, third governor general of Brazil, who died in 1573; thirteen altars, a gilded barrel vault centred on a great medallion with the Jesuit monogram IHS, and a sacristy faced to half height with Portuguese azulejos. It is the last surviving building of the Colégio dos Jesuítas, cradle of Jesuit education in Brazil; after the expulsion it housed various uses and, in 1833, the first medical school in Brazil. The cathedral is not inscribed by UNESCO in its own right: the official description names it among the major monuments of the Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia, first capital of Brazil and a crossroads of European, African and Amerindian cultures, inscribed in 1985 under criteria (iv) and (vi).