The city
Gateway to Brazil’s Northeast, Recife offers stunning scenery – with bridges and rivers weaving through the city and attracts thousands of tourists every year. Rich in cultural and folkloric traditions, its roots are always expressed in artistic form and preserved as a vital part of its heritage.
During major events like its famous Carnival, the sound of frevo fills the streets, moving crowds along with parades of blocos and troças, blending with other rhythms such as maracatu, caboclinho, forró, ciranda, coco de roda, and even electronic music. São João is another highlight, with countless attractions at the main venues for the traditional June festivals… But Recife isn’t only about celebration.
With over 1.5 million residents, the metropolitan region of Pernambuco’s capital is an economic cluster of great density and regional leadership. It hosts the state’s main industries and has established itself as a modern services center. Recife is recognised as the first gastronomic hub in the Northeast, Brazil’s second most important medical hub, and home to the country’s largest technology park – Porto Digital.
Recife is all of that.
And it’s also poetry:
Evocation of Recife (excerpt)
Recife
not the American Venice,
not the Mauritsstad of the merchants of the Dutch East India Company
not the Recife of Portuguese peddlers
not even the Recife I later learned to love –
the Recife of freedom-seeking revolutions
but a Recife without history or literature
the Recife of my childhood
(…)
Recife…
Union Street…
My grandfather’s home
I never thought that house could disappear!
Everything there seemed charged with eternity
Recife…
My grandfather, dead.
Recife, now dead, bighearted Recife, Recife Brazilian as my grandfather’s home.
(Manuel Bandeira, In: Libertinagem. C. Slater (trans.))
(…) Romantic Recife of twilight and bridges.
Of long twilights that witnessed the passing of Dutch noblemen.
That now gaze upon the sea, inert amid the tumultuous streets,
That shall one day watch the passage of airplanes heading to Pacific shores.
Romantic Recife of twilight and bridges.
And of the river’s Catholic beauty.
(Joaquim Cardozo, In: Obra Completa. (our trans.))
At the point where the sea fades
And the sands rise up
They dug their foundations
In the mute shadow of the earth
And raised their walls
From the cold slumber of stones.
Then shaped their flanks:
Thirty blue flags planted on the shore.
Today, it floats serene, half stolen from the sea,
Half born of imagination,
For it is from the dreams of men
That a city is invented.
(Carlos Pena Filho, In: Guia Prático da Cidade do Recife – O Início (our trans.))
To love cities, only – Recife,
Even with its bridges just like that
And its rivers that sing.
And its gardens light as sleepwalkers
And its corners unfolding Nassau’s dream.”
Women, countless. City, only one Recife.
(Ledo Ivo, In: Poesias Escolhidas (our trans.))
