Manaus: an opera house in the heart of the Amazon

Built in the heart of the Amazon rainforest thanks to late nineteenth-century rubber wealth, Manaus still preserves an opera house that seems incongruous thousands of kilometers from the Europe that inspired it.

The center can be explored on foot; the meeting of the waters requires a short boat trip.

The day begins at the Teatro Amazonas: Carrara marble, French steel and Murano glass, all imported from Europe to build it in 1896 in the middle of rainforest, a symbol of wealth that lasted only as long as the rubber monopoly before Asian plantations.

From the city port, a boat excursion sets out toward the Meeting of the Waters, where the Rio Negro and the Solimões flow side by side for kilometers without mixing, due to differences in temperature and density.

Returning toward the center, the Adolpho Lisboa Municipal Market sells Amazonian fish, tropical fruit and medicinal herbs from the forest under a structure of iron inspired by Parisian markets of the late nineteenth century.

In the afternoon, an observation tower rises above the canopy of trees at the MUSA, the Museum of the Amazon, which tells the story of the region's biodiversity through paths in the forest itself.

The curtain of the Teatro Amazonas rises today just as it did, but the rubber wealth that paid for it lasted barely a generation before deflating almost entirely.

Excursions to the Meeting of the Waters depart each morning from the city's floating port, a floating structure essential because the Rio Negro's level can vary by several meters between seasons.