The Amazon's Atlantic gateway — tacacá at Ver-o-Peso market, açaí eaten savoury with shrimp, and 400-year-old Portuguese forts on the equatorial waterfront
Belém is the largest city of the Brazilian Amazon and the equatorial port city where the world's greatest river system meets the Atlantic Ocean — a city of extraordinary Amazonian food culture, Portuguese colonial architecture, and the world's largest open-air market, Ver-o-Peso (Weight-Watcher's Market), established in 1625 as a Portuguese trade post and customs control point. Belém's food culture is unlike any other in Brazil: tacacá (hot yellow jicama broth with jambu — a herb that numbs the mouth — dried shrimp, and tucupi), pato no tucupi (duck in fermented manioc juice), and açaí eaten…
Belém was founded by the Portuguese in 1616 as Feliz Lusitânia — one of the first Portuguese settlements in the Brazilian Amazon, established to defend the river mouth from French and Dutch incursions. The city grew as the main export point for Amazon rubber during the rubber boom (1850–1912), when Belém became one of the wealthiest cities in South America — the Teatro da Paz (1878) opera house was built during this period and remains one of the finest neoclassical buildings in Brazil. The rubber boom's collapse after British-grown Malayan rubber entered the market devastated the economy, and…