this post is in english — use your browser’s translate button to read in portuguese.
este post está em inglês — use o botão de tradução do seu navegador para ler em português.
if you want to understand bahia, do not only look at the postcard version. look at what a city chooses to celebrate about itself.
salvador’s official anniversary is march 29. the city was founded on march 29, 1549 by tomé de sousa and became brazil’s first capital — a role it held until 1763. by 1558 it was operating the first slave market in the new world. that is the formal history. the more useful truth is that salvador is one of those places where history never really stays in the past. it presses up against your day. it shows up in architecture, in sound, in race, in religion, in class, in who feels at home — and in who is still trying to understand what home means here.
for Black people
i’d you are thinking about bahia, especially Black people outside brazil, this matters. there is a difference between visiting a city known as a center of afro-brazilian culture and actually trying to build a life in it. as a Preta woman who made the move, i can tell you that salvador is not just beautiful. it is charged. it will show you things about yourself. sometimes that feels affirming. sometimes it feels exposing. both are useful. that is one of the reasons i tell people to pay attention to how they feel here — not just what they photograph.
birthday week is a good example of what this city actually is. this year’s festival da cidade 2026 runs march 21 to april 5 — free programming spread across the whole city. music, literature, theater, visual art, and local maker energy woven into the celebration. on march 29 itself, mercado iaô in ribeira brings together more than 150 creative businesses across fashion, crafts, design, food, and self-care. if you want to understand a place, watch what it builds, not just what it sells.
moving to bahia is not just a logistics question. yes, housing matters. paperwork matters. money matters. but so does your relationship to place, pace, identity, and community. so does whether you are trying to consume the city or actually listen to it.
if you are new to this conversation, start with one year. one ocean. one wild dream. and the bloodline. they will tell you more about how i move through this place than a generic relocation checklist ever could.
if salvador’s birthday week is stirring something in you, do not reduce that feeling to wanderlust too quickly. sometimes a place is not calling you to visit. sometimes it is calling you to pay closer attention. that is exactly the conversation happening at fool around and find out.
- ready to talk seriously about the move? let’s start here.
- read the full story: one year. one ocean. one wild dream.
- read the bloodline: six hundred years. documented.
- book a session: one session. no tools. no theater.