In 1832, when Charles Darwin saw Salvador, now capital of Brazil’s north-eastern state of Bahia, from the deck of the Beagle, the usually matter-of-fact naturalist found himself transported into a ‘chaos of delight’, his senses overwhelmed.
‘It would be difficult [to] imagine, before seeing the view, anything so magnificent,’ Darwin wrote in his diary. Indeed, glimpsing the colonial city shimmering under a dome of blue sky, the brilliance of its colours, the