Recife

Travel Guide South America Brazil Pernambuco Recife

Introduction

Recife's beach Brazil.

Recife is known as the Brazilian Venice because of its many rivers, bridges, islands and mangroves that make the city quite pretty. This city is also known as the cultural centre for Brazil being the birthplace of many famous Brazilian writers and poets.

The area around this city of a million and half people was one of the first places settled by the Portuguese in the mid 16th century. The area became very wealthy because of the sugarcane industry. Brazilian sugarcane was grown in the farms around the city and then shipped to Europe. The settlers imported a huge population of slaves in order to maintain the fields. Almost all the sugarcane had to be shipped in Recife because it was the major harbour in the area.

From 1630 to 1654 the Dutch occupied the area and were eventually pushed out. Although the Dutch influence can still be felt in the city. Then in the 18th century Recife and the neighbouring town of Olinda got into an economic war. Recife won out and became the major city in the area while Olinda is still a nice town with a great historic centre. There are many wonderful sights and beaches to explore in and around the city of Recife.

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Sights and Activities

Religious Sites

First Synagogue in the Americas, Recife

Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue (קהל צור ישראל) - A synagogue has operated on the site of this museum from 1636 to 1654. It is the site of the first synagogue in the Americas. The museum looks like how synagogues looked liked in 16th and 17th century Spain and Portugal. Today there are currently 5 synagogues in the city.
Santo Antonio Church

Museums

The Museum of Pernambuco State (Museu do Estado de Pernambuco) - Located in a 19th century mansion. This museum houses a large collection of art from the 1630s to the present day. Occasionally the museums allows local artists to show their own work in a special show.
Northeastern Man Museum - The local history and culture museum.
Francisco Brennand Ceramic Shop - Francisco Brennand is one of the most important names in contemporary Brazilian sculpture. His ceramics works are displayed in large open sheds. The museum is in an old brick factory.
Gilberto Freyre Foundation - Art work and the personal items that belonged to Gilberto Freyre are on display here.
Recife City Museum - A small museum that has pictures and reproductions of old paintings that show the history of the city.

Other Sights and Activities

Ricardo Brennand Institute - This museum has a nice nice art gallery, library and large park. The museum looks like an old castle buried in the side of a hill
Boa Viagem Beach - The cities most important beach.
Casa Da Cultura - An ancient prison and souvenir shop.

Nearby

Olinda - Is a stunning old city that is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Beaches - There are several beaches from about 60 kilometres to a 100 kilometres away. These beaches include Porto de Galinhas, Ipojuca and Pernambuco.

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Events and Festivals

World Cup 2014

Australian Fans

The FIFA World Cup 2014 will be held in Brazil. It takes place from 12 June to 13 July 2014. It will be the second time that Brazil has hosted the competition, the previous being in 1950. The national teams of 32 countries will join the second biggest sports event in the world (after the Olympic Games). A total of 64 matches are to be played in twelve cities across Brazil, with the tournament beginning with a group stage. For the first time at a World Cup Finals, the matches will use goal-line technology. Twelve locations will be World Cup host cities: Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. They cover all the main regions of Brazil and create more evenly distributed hosting than the 1950 finals in Brazil provided, when matches were concentrated in the south-east and south. As a result the tournament will require significant long-distance travel for teams. Brazil opens the tournament against Croatia, played in Sao Paulo on the 12th of June, and the final will be played on the 13th of July in Rio de Janeiro.

Festa Junina (Saint John Festival) - The party starts on the 12th of June and ends on the 29th. During these 15 days there are bonfires, fireworks and folk performances in the streets. Remember that this holiday involves costume wearing, dancing and heavy drinking.
Carnaval - The four day led up to Lent is fun in this city. The local Frevo music is played all over the place, which is a mixture of European and Afro-Brazilian styles.

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Weather

Recife has a tropical climate with hot and humid conditions throughout the year. Temperatures during the day average between 28 °C from June to August to 31 °C from December to March. Nights are between 22 °C and 25 °C respectively.
Precipitation is possible in every month, though March to August is by far wetter compared to the September to March period. Especially May and June are wet with around 300mm of rain a month! October and November are perfect and almost completely dry.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Avg Max	30.2 °C	30.2 °C	30 °C	29.7 °C	28.9 °C	28.8 °C	27.3 °C	27.5 °C	28.1 °C	29 °C	30.1 °C	30.2 °C
Avg Min	22.4 °C	22.6 °C	22.7 °C	22.6 °C	21.9 °C	21.6 °C	21.1 °C	20.6 °C	20.7 °C	21.4 °C	21.9 °C	22.2 °C
Rainfall	103.4 mm	144.2 mm	264.9 mm	326.4 mm	328.9 mm	389.6 mm	385.6 mm	213.5 mm	122.5 mm	66.1 mm	47.8 mm	65 mm
Rain Days	14	16	19	21	23	25	25	23	18	15	12	13

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Getting There

Recife - Here comes the rain!

By Plane

Guararapes International Airport (REC) is the international airport located outside the city and handles over four million passengers a year. This airport has service to almost every major city in Brazil and South America. It also has service to Miami, Frankfurt, Munich, Atlanta, London and Lisbon.

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Getting Around

By Public Transport

Metro:
There is a great metro system in the city that, when completed, will be the second largest in the country.

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Sleep

Upscale

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Learn

Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife

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Keep Connected

Internet

Internet cafes (Lan houses) are increasingly common, and even small towns often have at least one spot with more or less decent connections.
An increasing number of hotels, airports and shopping malls also offer hotspots for Wi-Fi with your laptop computer or of course smartphone. Sometimes it is free, sometimes you need to register and there is a time limite and sometimes you need to pay a small amount for (day) use.

Phone

Post

Correios is the national postal service of Brazil. It is a government run postal service and overseen by the Brazilian Ministry of Communications. Post offices are generally open from Monday to Friday from 09:00am to 5:00pm, although post offices located in shopping malls have their own opening hours, usually from 10:00am to 10:00pm. There are no set opening hours at weekends and as post office owners can choose when to open and close. More and more post offices are open until 1:00pm on Saturdays though. You can check things at the nearest post office.

Sending postcards, letters and parcels is a rather straightforward process and services are reliable, though not overly fast when sending post internationally, mostly taking about a week to the USA and Europe, and there is a track-and-trace service for this as well. Domestically, there are both next day as well as more expensive same day delivery options. Stamps are available at post offices, as well as some kiosks or other places where they sell postcards.

For sending packages internationally, you can also used competitively priced private companies like TNT, UPS or DHL. They are generally much quicker and not much more expensive.

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