Brazil’s heart-breaking site of two million enslaved Africans

While these African-Brazilians lived in poverty, they prospered culturally, from practicing Afro-Brazilian religions, such as Candomblé, to evolving the first Rio samba gatherings. It was at Pedra do Sal where the first Carnival “ranchos” – the beginnings of Rio’s now famous samba schools, the clubs that create the Carnival parades – and where the first samba circles appeared, giving it the nickname “the birthplace of samba”. Some of the greatest names in Brazilian music have played here, including João da Baiana, Pixinguinha and Donga.

Yet just more than 100 years ago, it would have been impossible for these communities to have imagined that samba would one day underpin Brazil’s national identity. Rio’s elite were suspicious of samba and criminalised it. “Samba was persecuted, and police arrested musicians as criminals and broke their instruments,” Tavares said.

Because of this, samba gatherings were held in secret behind closed doors. One of the most famous houses for samba parties belonged to Hilária Batista de Almeida, known as Aunt Ciata, who is remembered as an influential figure in the development of Rio’s samba. Her legacy lives on at the Casa da Tia Ciata, a cultural space preserving her story, just next door to Pedra do Sal.

Samba wasn’t the only African cultural manifestation to be persecuted: capoeira, a martial art disguised as a dance, was also seen as a threat, leading public authorities in the 19th Century to ban it. Tavares explained this story while pointing to a group of silhouetted figures in different capoeira positions painted onto a street wall just 200m from Pedra do Sal. Next to them was a portrait of a man called Zumbi dos Palmares, who, she explained, was the leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares.