Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro and Eliane Canedo
Research and contributions: Cristiane Titoneli
Between four hills
On entering the bay, four small hills appeared, varying from thirty to sixty meters in height, and topped by religious institutions: Castelo (1583, Jesuits), Santo Antônio (1620, Franciscans), São Bento (1670, Benedictines) and Conceição (1590), the enchanting hill that still had the fortress built to defend the city against the ongoing threat of French corsairs. Faith reigned over this urban setting, from hilltops to lowlands.
Countless church towers were not the only demonstrations of ecclesiastical power. Bells and carillons played an important role in the daily life of the city, which was still very quiet at that time. As the sound of the bells carried to even the most distant areas, they were used to send messages to the population. If a fire broke out, the number of times they tolled indicated the parish where it began. In addition to emergency alerts, the bells also tolled the curfew at ten every night, ordered by the Police Superintendent-General as a way of protecting “good customs”. Officers patrolled the streets, with heavy fines for anyone disobeying this order. For slaves, punishment was far harsher: whipping and a night in jail.
In addition to the churches perched on the hilltops, monasteries were established on the floodplain: Nossa Senhora da Ajuda (1750) and Nossa Senhora do Carmo (1590). Later on, countless churches dedicated to other saints were built, with the best known being the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Candelária (1775-1898). With severe façades, its interior showcased the wealth of the colony (buoyed by gold discovered and mined in Minas Gerais State), whose opulence was reflected in the carved woodwork of its gilded altars.
Two small churches were located outside this compact set of religious institutions, close to the Terreiro do Paço (today Praça XV plaza): Nossa Senhora da Glória (1742) and Nossa Senhora da Saúde (1743). The former perches high on a hill jutting out into the crystal-clear water on the south side of the Bay, where the Battle of Uruçumirim was fought on January 20, 1567, finally defeating the Huguenots and their Tamoyo allies. More modest, the hilltop church dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Saúde in 1743 on the hill of the same name gently overlooks the rugged coastline of the Guanabara Bay.
During the next few centuries, the shipping activities taking place in this fragment of land leading to Prainha beach were to be very important for the city and Brazil. Always remote from the central area, this region communicated with the city through the Caminho da Vala path (today Rua Uruguaiana), which began at the Lagoa de Santo Antônio lagoon (now the Largo da Carioca square) and led to Prainha beach (now the Praça Mauá plaza), at the foot of the São Bento and Conceição hills.
Originally an enchanting spot, this stretch of the Guanabara Bay shoreline changed steadily, with an ominous atmosphere looming over it by the late XIX century. A gibbet was built there, close to the Largo da Prainha square, where criminals and rebellious slaves were hanged. Dismantled in 1834 in response to protests from the neighboring Benedictine monastery, it was reassembled at the same site whenever needed.
This was not the only source of the ill-omened atmosphere that gradually spread through this area. Right on the corner of the Ladeira da Conceição and Rua da Vala was the Aljube: an ecclesiastical prison built in 1735 to hold priests failing to comply with church rules, like not getting drunk, not being rowdy or not getting involved with smugglers.
This was also where the so-called ‘new Christians’ were held, as they awaited deportation back to Portugal, where they would be judged by the Inquisition. It was only in the early XIX century that the Aljube was turned into an ordinary prison and renamed the Cadeia da Relação jail. But even without the gallows or the jail (which was demolished in 1906), this area still remained haunted. Chroniclers of those days wrote about how the wails and groans of the victims who died there could still be heard at night.