Paço Imperial and Praça XV

You're now at the political heart of Brazil for more than a century. This long white building hardly looks like a palace, yet a viceroyalty, a kingdom and an empire were run from here.

1The governors' house

In 1733 Governor Gomes Freire de Andrade asked the king for permission to build a seat of government. The design went to the military engineer José Fernandes Pinto Alpoim, who incorporated the old Royal Warehouse and the Mint. It opened in 1743 and, in 1763, when the colonial capital moved from Salvador to Rio, it became the viceroy's residence.

2A king, emperors and a law

In 1808 the Portuguese Court arrived and the building became the Royal Palace, with a throne room for the hand-kissing ceremony. Two dates made it unforgettable. On 9 January 1822, Prince Pedro announced here that he would stay in Brazil in defiance of Lisbon: the famous «Dia do Fico». And on 13 May 1888, in one of its rooms, Princess Isabel signed the Golden Law, which abolished slavery.

Under the Republic, the palace became the central post office and lost its decoration. IPHAN restored it in the 1980s, and today it is a cultural centre.

3What to look for

• Mestre Valentim's fountain (1789), where ships took on water when the sea came right up to here.
• The balconied windows with curved lintels, a novelty in eighteenth-century Brazil.
• The Arco do Teles, across the square, cut through houses of the same period.