Cais do Valongo

In the port area, in the Saúde district, the Valongo Wharf is one of the world’s most important sites of memory of slavery. The stones of the old wharf, exposed in the open air, mark the spot where hundreds of thousands of Africans brought by force entered Brazil.

The stone wharf was built in 1811, in an area that already concentrated the city’s trade in enslaved people. It is estimated that between 500,000 and one million Africans landed here between 1811 and 1831 — making Valongo the main point of arrival of enslaved people in the Americas.

In 1831 a law banned the slave trade to Brazil, although it continued illegally for two more decades. In 1843 the wharf was covered by a new one, the Cais da Imperatriz (Empress’s Wharf), built for the arrival of Empress Teresa Cristina, wife of Emperor Pedro II. Later, landfill buried everything, and the site was forgotten for more than a century.

In 2011, during the Porto Maravilha port-renewal works, archaeologists rediscovered the wharf’s stones. The excavations revealed a large number of objects linked to the Africans who passed through, such as amulets, cowrie shells and pipes. On July 9, 2017, the Valongo Wharf was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The site is part of the Historical and Archaeological Circuit Celebrating African Heritage, which includes Pedra do Sal, the Pretos Novos Cemetery and other landmarks of Little Africa. More than an attraction, it is a place of memory: an invitation to reflect on the violence of slavery and on the strength and culture of the African peoples who helped shape Brazil.