ChafarizdoMestreValentim

This plaque is part of the 'Praça XV' circuit. Click here to see more about this and other circuits.

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Listen to the audio about the Chafariz do Mestre Valentim

Image description: This is a painting depicting a historic square with several buildings in the background. On the left, there is a building with a red roof and white facade. In the center, there is a large church with domes and crosses. On the right, there are more buildings with red roofs and a tall tower. In the foreground, there are people walking and boats on the river ahead. The colors are predominantly beige, brown, and red. There is no visible text in the image.

Until the mid-19th century, few places in Rio de Janeiro were as busy as the Chafariz da Pirâmide, or Chafariz do Mestre Valentim, as it is better known today. Its strategic position on the edge of the Cais do Porto made it a true hub for meetings, conversations, and commercial activities. At night, the site turned into a stage for plots and conspiracies, as in the case of the Conjuração Carioca. There was an intense back-and-forth and a hubbub of street vendors, hired-out enslaved workers, civil servants, sailors newly arrived, docked, or departing, traveling salesmen, mule drivers, small and wealthy merchants, soldiers, and ministers.

The French artist Jean-Baptiste Debret — mainly responsible for the visual records of Rio de Janeiro between the 1810s and 1830s — described an everyday scene as follows:

Por volta das quatro horas da tarde que se veem os pequenos capitalistas chegarem de todas as ruas adjacentes ao largo do Palácio, para se sentarem nos parapeitos do cais, onde têm o costume de vir sentir à fresca até a Ave Maria (das seis às sete horas da tarde). Em menos de meia hora todos os lugares estão tomados.

Image description: This is a colorful painting depicting an urban scene, likely from the 19th century, with people interacting around a fountain. On the left side, we see a man wearing casual clothes, holding a baby and a dog. In the background, there are old buildings and a domed tower. In the center, several people are talking and exchanging objects, while two men in military uniform sit on the fountain. On the right, a soldier in full uniform observes the scene. In the background, boats are docked at a harbor.

The Mestre Valentim fountain was inaugurated in 1789 on the site of another fountain, designed by the Portuguese military engineer José Fernandes Pinto Alpoim, which had been erected around 1747. Four decades later, the area around Praça XV (known at the time as Largo do Carmo) was restored as part of a series of sanitation, water supply, and beautification works carried out under the government of viceroy D. Luís de Vasconcelos. A new fountain was commissioned from the skilled Mestre Valentim — a Black artist, born in Minas Gerais around 1745, who was also responsible for the works at Passeio Público and a series of works in the interiors of Rio's churches. The water reached the fountain's spouts after flowing down the Carioca Aqueduct — known today as Arcos da Lapa. And the sea, which once reached up to its steps, gradually receded due to successive landfills in the area during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.

Image description: This is a painting depicting a Black man carrying a large red vase on his head. He is wearing a red shirt and blue and white striped pants. In the background, there is an architectural structure with a triangular roof and columns, possibly a fountain. Further back, we see mountains and some ships in the distance. The landscape is lit by a clear sky.

The stone that predominates in the construction is granite, and some of the stonework details are made of white gneiss (pedra de galho), which offers contrast with the grayish stone. The prismatic body of the fountain is surrounded by a balustrade – a kind of 'railing,' in this case made of stone – which functioned as a handrail for people who climbed up to the top, by means of a staircase inside the fountain.

The two staircases leading to the sea are depicted in several works by travelers, such as in this engraving by Thierry Frères, based on the original by Jean-Baptiste Debret. The staircases were only "rediscovered" following excavations carried out in the 1980s, and it is now possible to see their stone steps again next to the fountain.

Image description: This is an engraving depicting a historic square in Rio de Janeiro. On the left side, we see a building with several windows and a blue roof. In front of it, a small crowd of people is walking. In the center, a tower-shaped fountain stands out, surrounded by staircases. In the background, other buildings, including a palace with a red roof, complete the scene. The image is in black and white. In the lower corner, it reads "Vue de la Place du Palais, à Rio de Janeiro".

As this is a work from colonial Brazil, there are elements that reference the Portuguese crown, such as the armillary sphere — an important object of nautical technology during the period of the "great navigations" — at the top of the pyramid.

One of the symbols of Rio's baroque, Mestre Valentim's fountain no longer serves its original function of supplying water to the city's population, but it retains its beauty and invites today's passersby to imagine the Rio of days gone by.

Image description: This is a photograph of a fountain located in a public space. The image shows a historic structure with a pyramidal roof covered by ceramic tiles, decorated with geometric motifs. The fountain is surrounded by a metal fence and sits on a level elevated above the surrounding terrain. In the background, there are green trees and modern buildings with glass and metal facades. The sky is blue with some white clouds.

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Imagem 1 de 2: Carlos Luís da Cruz/IPatrimônio