Qualla: João Pessoa, Paraíba

João Pessoa, Paraíba: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marquinhos, CC0. On 26 July 1930 the governor of Paraíba was shot dead in a confectionery on Rua Nova in Recife. His killer, João Duarte Dantas, was a political rival and a personal enemy, and the killing detonated a national crisis — one of the triggers of the revolution that carried Getúlio Vargas to power that October. Six weeks later, on 4 September, the Paraíba legislature passed State Law No. 700 and renamed the state capital after the dead man. The city had already been Nossa Senhora das Neves, then Filipeia, then Frederica, then Parahyba do Norte. Since 1930 it has been João Pessoa, and only in December 2024 did the state finally strike from its constitution the plebiscite, never held, that might have changed it again.

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Image: Marquinhos | CC0

João Pessoa, Paraíba: Snow in the Tropics

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jailsoncoutinho, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Portuguese had been trying for years to hold this river mouth: five expeditions, four failures, a fort on the Paraíba burned within a year of being built. What finally worked was a treaty. On 5 August 1585 — the feast of Our Lady of the Snows, named for a legendary August sno...

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Image: Jailsoncoutinho | CC BY-SA 4.0

João Pessoa, Paraíba: Frederikstad, Briefly

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Allan T. de Souza Allants, Public domain. The Dutch took the city on their third attempt, walking in without resistance on Christmas Eve 1634 while the population fled inland. They renamed it Frederica — Frederikstad — for Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. It held about 1,500 people and nineteen sugar mills at the time,...

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Image: Allan T. de Souza Allants | Public domain

João Pessoa, Paraíba: Seven Hundred Buildings, Four Centuries

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Denys Fausto Formiga, CC BY-SA 4.0. The historic centre was delimited in 1982 across 117 hectares and listed as national heritage in December 2007, the protected core covering 37 hectares and roughly seven hundred buildings through the Centro, Varadouro, Róger, Jaguaribe and Tambiá neighbourhoods. The range packed ...

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Image: Denys Fausto Formiga | CC BY-SA 4.0

João Pessoa, Paraíba: The Second-Greenest City, With an Asterisk

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matheus Jampa da Silva, CC BY-SA 4.0. During the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Mayor Carlos Mangueira announced that João Pessoa was the second-greenest city in the world, behind Paris. The claim has trailed the city ever since, and by the frankest accounts it was a publicity stunt with no methodology behind it. The odd ...

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Image: Matheus Jampa da Silva | CC BY-SA 4.0

João Pessoa, Paraíba: Two Floors and No More

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit lubasi, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1970 a state constitutional amendment capped buildings along the shoreline between Penha and Formosa beaches at two storeys, and the 1989 state constitution declared the whole Paraíba coast protected heritage and kept the ban in place. Walk down to Tambaú or Cabo Branco and th...

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Image: lubasi | CC BY-SA 2.0