Salvador ( founded as São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos7 ) is a Brazilian city , capital of the state of Bahia and Brazil's first capital . The city of Salvador is notable in Brazil for its cuisine , music and architecture , and its metropolitan area is the wealthiest of northeastern Brazil . The African influence in many cultural aspects of the city makes it the center of african - Brazilian culture . This reflects a situation in which we celebrate african -Brazilian cultural practices . The historical center of Salvador , Pelourinho iconized in the district, is renowned for its Portuguese colonial architecture with historical monuments dating from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century and was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational , Scientific and Cultural ( UNESCO) in 1985
Located in the homonymous micro , Salvador has more than 2.7 million inhabitants , the most populous county in the Northeast , the third most populous of Brazil and the eighth most populous Latin American ( surpassed by São Paulo , Mexico City , Buenos Aires , Lima , Bogotá , Rio de Janeiro and Santiago ) .9 Its metropolitan area , known as " Great Savior " , has 3,884,435 inhabitants inhabitants registered in 2012 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics ( IBGE ) , 10 which makes the metropolis most populated Northeast , Brazil 's seventh largest and one of the 120 world.11 for these urban- population size, is classified by the IBGE survey on Brazilian urban network as a regional metropolis. These demographics are spread over an area of 706.8 km ² , still according to the IBGE , the coordinates from the frame of the founding of the city , Fort Santo Antonio da Barra , are 12 ° 58 ' 16'' south and 38 ° 30 ' 39'' oeste.2
The first seat of the Portuguese colonial administration of Brazil , the city is one of the oldest in America . For a long time it was formerly called " Bahia " or " city of Bahia ," including by residents of the state itself and appears under that name or as " Salvador da Bahia " in order to differentiate them from other cities of the same name . Black also received epithets like Rome and Mecca Negritude , being a metropolis with a large percentage of blacks , although not the majority of the population , full of symbolic elements and African religious . According to the anthropologist Vivaldo da Costa Lima , the term " Black Rome " is a derivation of " African Rome ," coined by Mother Annie , founder of Ile Axé Opó Afonjá . In 1940 , in testimony to cultural anthropologist Ruth Landes . According Mother Aninha , as Rome was the center of Catholicism , Salvador was the center of Orisha worship . Later , in her book City of Women , Landes translated the expression as Black Africa . Later , when the book was translated into Portuguese , Black Africa became Rome Negra.12
Economic center of the state , Salvador is also exporting port , industrial, administrative and tourist center. Moreover , hosts major regional , national and international companies . Was in Salvador where Odebrecht , which in 2008 became the largest conglomerate of companies from the construction and petrochemical industries in Latin America , with several business units in Salvador , Rio de Janeiro , Sao Paulo and various countries came world.13 in addition to businesses , the city also hosts many events , organizations and institutions , such as the Federal University of Bahia ( second best in the North and Northeast 58th America Latina14 15 Brazilian and 16 most improved in the last two years17 ) and the School of Directors of the Brazilian Army .
