JOÃO PESSOA is one of the oldest and one of the poorest cities in Brazil. In recent years, there's been massive new development along the city's two main beaches, but an air of dilapidated elegance remains around the old part of town. Of all the Northeast's city centres, this is the one least scarred by modern developers. Just a few kilometres away, the town beaches of
Cabo Branco and
Tambaú are well on the way to becoming much the same as most others in the Northeast, with towering skyscrapers stretching back towards the old town. There aren't enough of them yet, though, to detract from the stunning beauty of the vast white sandy beach, and out of season, tourists are still few and far between.
The City
The centre of João Pessoa is dotted with colonial churches , monasteries and convents , some of which are extremely beautiful. Until 1992 they were all being allowed to fall into ruin but, not a moment too soon, the state government and the Ministry of Culture mounted a crash restoration programme, for once using historians and archeologists to return the buildings to their original glory, rather than gutting them. These days, modernization has certainly taken its toll on the city, but you can still see mule carts sitting alongside BMWs at the city's traffic lights.
