Recife: canals and Brazil's Venice

Crossed by rivers and canals that earned it the nickname 'Venice of Brazil,' Recife preserves in its historic center the heritage of a Dutch rule that lasted just over twenty years in the seventeenth century.

Recife Antigo, the historic center, is easily explored on foot.

Recife Antigo, the foundational neighborhood of the city on the island between river and ocean, preserves eclectic early twentieth-century buildings now converted into galleries, bars and venues for live music.

The Marco Zero, a circular plaza on the waterfront from which the city's distances are officially measured, hosts every weekend craft stalls and performances of Pernambuco folk music.

The Instituto Ricardo Brennand, a private museum built in the form of a medieval castle, houses one of the world's largest collections of antique weapons and paintings from the period of Dutch rule in Brazil.

The Casa da Cultura, housed in a former nineteenth-century penitentiary with a star-shaped floor plan, today contains local craft shops distributed across several floors in the old cells.

The paintings housed at the Instituto Ricardo Brennand tell of the brief Dutch rule that gave Recife its first canals; the Casa da Cultura, born instead as a prison, shows a much more recent and equally tangible legacy.

The Marco Zero, the point from which every distance in the city is measured, remains nonetheless the most honest place from which to begin navigating these layers.