Four days in Recife: the capital of Dutch Brazil, with Olinda on the hill above it

Three nights in Pernambuco: the old port island, the gilded churches of the colonial centre, a day in Olinda and an afternoon on the beach, then a castle full of Dutch Brazil on the way out.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Recife
Places
10 across 4 days
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The Dutch took this coast in 1630 and held it for a quarter of a century, and it is the only serious non-Portuguese chapter in Brazilian history. They burned Olinda, moved down to the sandbank at the river mouth, drained it, bridged it and built a proper northern European trading town on it, with a Jewish community that had followed them from Amsterdam and built the first synagogue in the Americas.

Then the Portuguese took it back, the Dutch left, and everything that came afterwards was built on top of what they had laid out. That is what makes Recife odd. The street plan is Dutch, the churches inside it are as gold-heavy as anything in Portugal, and the culture on the streets is neither: frevo, maracatu and a carnival that people here consider the real one.

Three nights covers the island, the colonial centre, Olinda on the hill four kilometres north, and enough beach to justify the flight. It is hot, flat and walkable in the mornings and best taken slowly after that.

Highlights

  • Kahal Zur Israel, the first synagogue built in the Americas, on the street where the Dutch traders lived
  • The Golden Chapel, a small room in a Franciscan convent lined floor to ceiling in carved gilt cedar
  • Sao Jose market, an iron-framed Victorian hall dropped into a tropical city
  • Olinda, an entire hill town of painted colonial houses and views back over Recife
  • The sculpture park on the reef, where the city's most famous ceramicist filled a breakwater with heads

Where to stay

Recife

The city sits where two rivers meet the sea, split across islands and joined by more bridges than any other Brazilian city, which is why it gets compared to Venice by people who have not been to Venice. Recife Antigo, the old port, is the northernmost island and the Dutch heart. Santo Antonio and Sao Jose, on the next island south, hold the colonial churches and the markets. Boa Viagem, where the hotels are, is eight kilometres south along the beach.

Olinda, on a hill four kilometres north, was the original capital and is now a separate small town on the world heritage list. Three nights gives one day to the island, one to the colonial centre, one to Olinda and the beach, and a last morning out west.

Day by day

Day 1 in Recife

The old port island, and the Dutch street

Recife Antigo is a few blocks of warehouses and merchant houses on the island where the Dutch built their town, restored in the last thirty years after decades of dereliction. It is the easiest afternoon in the city and the best introduction to why it exists at all.

Rua do Bom Jesus, one street back from the water, was the Jewish street of Dutch Recife. The synagogue on it is the reason to come, and it is small, careful and unexpectedly moving, with the excavated ritual bath under a glass floor.

Finish at the water. The reef the city is named after runs out into the sea here, and somebody had the good sense to put sculpture on it.

  1. 14:30

    Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue

    Religious

    The first synagogue built anywhere in the Americas, founded by Sephardic Jews who came from Amsterdam with the Dutch fleet. When the Portuguese returned the community scattered, and some of them ended up founding the Jewish congregation of New Amsterdam, later New York. Closed Mondays.

  2. 15:45

    Malakoff Tower Cultural Observatory

    Other

    A stone tower from 1853 built on the site of the Dutch fort, now an observatory and small cultural centre. Worth the climb for the view across the port and the roofs of the old town, and the astronomy evenings are free.

  3. 17:00

    Parque das Esculturas Francisco Brennand

    Culture

    Ninety-odd ceramic totems and heads by Francisco Brennand, standing along the breakwater that gives Recife its name, with the open Atlantic on one side and the port on the other. Best in the last hour of light.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner on Rua do Bom Jesus

    Eat

    The old town's restaurant street, busy from Thursday to Sunday and quiet on a weeknight. Several places do a proper northeastern menu; anywhere advertising carne de sol will feed you well.

With more time: The old town has more to it on a Sunday, when the streets close to traffic and a craft market runs along them. If you arrive with a whole afternoon spare, the fort at the north end of the island holds the city museum and takes half an hour.

Day 2 in Recife

The colonial centre: the Golden Chapel and the market

Cross the bridge south and the town changes character completely. The next island is dense, noisy, commercial and Portuguese, with baroque churches wedged between shops selling hammocks and hardware, and it is at its best on a weekday morning when the whole city is out doing business.

Start early, because it gets very hot by eleven and the churches close for lunch. Two of them are worth the trip on their own, and they are ten minutes apart on foot.

Then the market, which is the other reason to be here. Sao Jose is a working food hall rather than a tourist one, and the streets around it sell everything the interior of Pernambuco eats and wears.

  1. 09:15

    Convento Franciscano de Santo Antônio

    Religious

    The convent is plain and the chapel inside it is not. Every surface of one small room is carved cedar covered in gold leaf, finished in the early eighteenth century, with painted panels overhead and blue Portuguese tiles in the cloister outside. It is the single best interior in the northeast.

  2. 11:00

    São Pedro dos Clérigos

    Religious

    Built between 1728 and 1782 and standing at the back of a small cobbled square that is one of the prettiest corners of the city. The facade is heavy baroque, the ceiling is a painted illusion of a dome that is not there, and the square outside fills with tables at lunchtime.

  3. 12:15

    Mercado de São José

    Other

    An iron-framed market hall designed in 1871, prefabricated in Europe and bolted together here, and still the food market for the centre. Fish, cassava flour, dried shrimp, herbs sold by women who will tell you what each one cures. Go before noon.

  4. 13:30

    Lunch by the market

    Eat

    The stalls at the back of the hall and the small restaurants on the streets around it do a set lunch for very little: rice, beans, farofa and whatever meat is going. Ask for the prato feito.

With more time: The old prison a few blocks north was converted into a craft market, with a shop in each cell and the cell doors still on them, and it is the best place in the city to buy ceramics and lace. The state museum and the modern art gallery are both ten minutes away by car if the afternoon needs an air-conditioned hour.

Day 3 in Recife

Olinda in the morning, the beach after

Olinda was the capital of the sugar captaincy for eighty years, until the Dutch burned it in 1631 and the trade moved down to the harbour. Being ruined early is why it survived: nothing much was built here afterwards, so the hill kept its churches, its convents and its low painted houses, and the whole thing has been on the world heritage list since 1982.

It is steep, cobbled and small. An hour of walking covers most of it, and the point is as much the views back across the bay to the towers of Recife as any single building. Go early, before the heat.

Come back down for the afternoon and spend it on the sand. The reef here matters more than anywhere else in Brazil, so read the warning on swimming before you go in.

  1. 09:00

    Olinda Cathedral

    Religious

    The church at the top of the hill, founded in the sixteenth century and rebuilt after the Dutch fire, with the whole coastline laid out from the terrace in front of it: the bay, the palms, and Recife's high-rise wall in the haze to the south.

  2. 10:30

    Sacred Art Museum of Pernambuco

    Culture

    The old town hall of 1535 and later the bishop's palace, now holding the state's collection of colonial religious art, which in this part of Brazil means gilt, blood and a great deal of imported Portuguese carving. The building and its views are half the visit.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch in Olinda

    Eat

    The lanes around the main square have small restaurants in colonial houses with courtyards, most doing seafood and a good moqueca. Several have a view, and they are worth an hour rather than a rush.

  4. 15:00

    Boa Viagem Beach

    Visit

    Eight kilometres of white sand backed by a wall of apartment towers, with a natural reef a few hundred metres out that forms warm shallow pools at low tide. Those pools are where to swim, and the water beyond the reef is where not to. Kiosks all along the promenade.

With more time: Olinda's carnival workshops make the giant puppets that lead the parades and several can be visited year round, which is the best way to understand what happens here in February. If the tide is wrong for swimming, the promenade at Boa Viagem is good for a long walk and the kiosks sell cold beer regardless.

Day 4 in Recife

A castle full of Dutch Brazil, then the airport

The last morning goes west, to a private collection assembled by an industrialist and housed in a building he had built to look like a Norman castle. It sounds ridiculous and it is the best museum in Recife.

The point of it is the paintings: the largest collection anywhere of Frans Post, the Dutch artist who came here in the 1630s and produced the first European landscapes of the Americas, all sugar mills, palm trees and armadillos. There is also a very large armoury.

The airport is twenty minutes south from there, so this works for anything leaving after about two in the afternoon. With a morning flight, skip it and walk the beach instead.

  1. 09:30

    Ricardo Brennand Institute

    Culture

    European arms and armour, Brazilian colonial furniture and the Frans Post landscapes, in a mock-medieval castle with a moat and a sculpture garden around it. Two hours minimum. Closed Mondays, so check before building the day around it.

With more time: The ceramics workshop of the same family, deeper into the forest a few kilometres away, is an extraordinary place: thousands of pieces by one artist arranged along an avenue of his own design. Allow an extra two hours and go by car. With less time, the museum of the northeastern man is closer in and covers the folk culture of the region properly.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Guararapes airport is 10 km south of the centre and sits right behind Boa Viagem, so most hotel transfers are fifteen minutes. It is the main hub for the northeast, with direct flights from Lisbon and across Brazil, and the metro runs from the terminal towards the centre.

The old centre is small and its three historic districts are joined by short bridges and walked in an hour end to end. Everything else needs a car. Ride-hailing is cheap and is how most visitors get to Olinda, the beach and the museums out west.

Olinda is about a twenty minute drive north of the centre and a bus runs there from the old town, though the traffic makes it slow. Going in the morning and coming back for lunch is the usual pattern.

The beach, and the sharks

This has to be said plainly because the signs on the sand say it too. The stretch of coast at Boa Viagem has one of the highest rates of shark attack anywhere in the world, following harbour construction in the 1990s that changed what swims in close. Attacks are rare in absolute terms and several have been fatal.

The rule that keeps people safe is simple: stay inside the natural reef that runs parallel to the shore, in the shallow pools that form at low tide, and do not swim out past it. Check the tide before going in, because at high tide the reef is covered and the pools are gone. Lifeguards will tell you when it is not sensible.

If that puts you off entirely, the beaches an hour or two south at Porto de Galinhas have the same warm reef pools and no such history.

When to go, and carnival

Recife is three hundred kilometres from the equator and hot all year, around 30 degrees by day whatever the month. The difference is rain: the wet season runs from about March to July and can be heavy for days at a time. September to February is drier and sunnier.

Carnival here is a genuine reason to plan a trip around, and it is nothing like Rio's. There is no stadium and no ticket. A daytime street carnival of frevo, brass and maracatu drumming takes over both Recife and Olinda, and the opening parade on the Saturday morning is one of the largest street gatherings in the world. Book a year out or avoid the week entirely.

The other date worth knowing is Sao Joao in June, when the whole northeast throws forro parties for a fortnight.

Staying safe

Recife has a serious violent crime problem in its outer neighbourhoods and a much smaller one in the places visitors go, but street robbery does happen in the old centre and it is worth taking the standard precautions: little in your pockets, phone out of sight, ride-hailing after dark rather than walking.

The historic centre is a working commercial district and it empties completely at night, except on the one street of bars in the old port, which is busy and policed. Boa Viagem and Olinda are the comfortable places to be after dark. Do not wander the unlit lanes at the top of Olinda late at night.

Eating

Pernambuco cooking is the best argument for coming here. Look for carne de sol, salted sun-dried beef served with cassava and curd cheese, and for bode, goat, which the interior does better than anywhere. On the coast it is agulhinha, small fried fish eaten whole, and crab picked at the table.

Tapioca is the northeastern staple: a crepe made from cassava starch, folded around cheese, coconut or dried meat, cooked in front of you at a stall in about ninety seconds. Bolo de rolo, a rolled cake of paper-thin sponge and guava paste, is the local sweet.

Drink cachaca from the state's own distilleries, or a caldo de cana, pressed sugarcane juice, from a street cart with a lime in it.

Where to stay

Boa Viagem is where almost all the hotels are: a wall of towers along eight kilometres of beach, safe to walk at night, close to the airport and about twenty minutes from the old centre. It has no atmosphere at all and it is very convenient.

Olinda is the opposite. Small guesthouses in colonial houses on a hill with a view over the bay, quiet, beautiful, and a taxi ride from everything else. For a stay of three nights it is a genuine alternative and the better one if you like being somewhere rather than near everything.

The old centre itself has a handful of new hotels in restored buildings on the island, which is atmospheric on a weekend evening and dead on a Tuesday.

Recife is not an easy city to like at first glance, and the reward for pushing past the traffic and the tower blocks is a place with a stranger history than the rest of the country. The Dutch street, the gold chapel and the market are all within twenty minutes of each other, and none of them looks like Brazil next door.

If the dates allow, come in February. Whatever you think you know about Brazilian carnival, the version here is louder, earlier in the day and far harder to watch from the side.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Recife or Olinda: which should you stay in?
Olinda if you want the atmosphere: colonial guesthouses, a hill, a view and a quiet evening. Boa Viagem in Recife if you want the beach, the restaurants and a fifteen minute run to the airport. They are twenty minutes apart, so either works for the plan above.
Is it safe to swim at Boa Viagem?
Inside the reef, at low tide, yes, and that is what everyone does. Beyond the reef, no. This coast has one of the highest recorded rates of shark attack in the world and the warning signs on the beach are not decorative. Check the tide, stay in the pools, and follow the lifeguards.
How many days do you need in Recife?
Three nights is right for the old town, the colonial centre, Olinda and a beach afternoon. Add two more if you want to get down the coast to Porto de Galinhas, which is what most Brazilians come to this state for.
Is Recife carnival better than Rio?
It is completely different. Rio is a ticketed stadium parade at night; Recife and Olinda run a free daytime street carnival with frevo bands, giant puppets and hundreds of thousands of people walking in it rather than watching. If you would rather be in the thing than in a seat, this is the one.
Do you need a car?
No. The historic centre walks, and ride-hailing covers Olinda, the beach and the museums for very little. A car is only worth it if you are going down the coast for a few days.