It is from the port of Praça XV that the city was built, with the Paço Imperial on one side, Rua do Mercado on the other, and the city upon the Morro do Castelo. The gneiss elevations that support the coastline of Guanabara Bay along the municipality's contour guarantee the elevations upon which the city was built: Morros do Castelo, Santo Antônio, São Bento, and Conceição. The four hills that served as the cradle of the city. Between them, systems of wetlands, marshes, and lagoons stretched all the way to Saco de São Diogo, today the neighborhood of Cidade Nova.
It is quite interesting to notice this city built in this environment of small coastal elevations, beaches, marshes and lagoons. It is with these environments that the city will "fight" in the valley formed by the corridor between the alignment of the São Bento, Conceição and Santo Cristo hills on one side and Castelo, Santo Antônio and Senado on the other, up to the boundaries of the São Diogo mangrove swamp. The city remains restricted to this space between Praça XV and the São Diogo mangrove swamp, where Praça XI is built. This is the site of the city of Rio de Janeiro from its founding until almost the turn from the 19th to the 20th century.
In this cluster of marshes and wetlands with small rocky hills, the city's more upscale neighborhoods and its periphery were already divided. Toward the higher ground beyond the hot, humid wetlands, the upscale neighborhoods of Santa Tereza and Estácio take shape, while the periphery forms along the edge of the mangrove in Pequena África, where formerly enslaved people and poor immigrants lived: the periphery near the Mangue. It's no accident that this is the birthplace of Carioca samba, which naturally arises in the city's periphery of that era – in Praça XI. Only in 1900, in an astonishingly impactful project, would they fill in the Mangue, doing away with the entire sea inlet of São Diogo, and the city expands forcefully into the north zone, urbanizing the old engenho (sugar mill) areas: Engenho Novo, Engenho de Dentro, Engenho da Rainha, and so on, culminating in the Pereira Passos reform, which mapped out the great urban transformation of the modern city.
Image description: The image is an aerial photograph of an urban area, with several areas outlined in yellow and blue lines. On the left, there is a large complex of buildings, while more densely urbanized areas are found on the right. At the center, an important square stands out, labeled Praça XV. To the right, there are islands and lagoons, including Ilha das Cobras and Ilha de Villegagnon. The outlined areas are labeled with names such as Mo. Gamboa, Mo. da Providência, Mo. S. Bento, Mo. Concelhão, Mo. Santo Cristo, Mo. S. Antônio, Mo. Senado, and Santa Teresa.Schematic map of the transformations along the waterfront and downtown area of Rio de Janeiro, where lagoons, marshes, and sea were filled in.
Image description: This is a photograph of a city along a body of water. From left to right, we see several buildings of different heights and shapes, some with light-colored façades and others in darker tones. In the center, there is an area with smaller, more scattered structures. On the right, the skyline is made up of more buildings and a bridge crossing the river. The sky is overcast, giving the image a gray tone. In the foreground, we see calm water and a bird in flight. There is no legible text in the image.Landfill of Santos Dumont Airport, almost connecting to the Ilha de Villegagnon
