Maceió Travel Guide | What to do in Maceió

Originally founded in the seventeenth century, based around a large sugar plantation, Maceió, the state capital of Alagoas, fronts the Atlantic Ocean with several attractive beaches; it also faces onto the Lagoa Mundaú, an inland lake accessible from the sea that offers a wide natural harbour. In the 1930s and 40s, Maceió was an elegant city of squares and houses nestling under palm trees. Today, while it is still attractive in places, the city has suffered in recent years from the attentions of planners, most notably in their wrecking of a once-famous waterfront promenade that faced the harbour and around which Maceió grew. An early nineteenth-century customs house once stood here, framed by offices and the fine houses of traders – all now gone and replaced by grimy concrete boxes.

Lampião

Lampião was born Virgulino Ferreira da Silva in 1897 in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. As Virgulino grew up, he and his family got involved in local feuding and they ended up on the wrong side of the law. Virgulino’s father was killed in a police raid on his home, turning Virgulino, only 25 years old, into a bandit gang leader and a deadly threat to the local establishment for the next fifteen years. The Robin Hood of Brazil image he cultivated belies the reality of a complex, vain and brutal man. It is perhaps his boldness that made him stand out, often fighting battles when his gang was outnumbered more than three to one.

The law finally caught up with Lampião in 1938. The police detachment that shot him, his wife, Maria Bonita, and his closest lieutenants preserved their heads in alcohol so that they could be shown in market towns in the interior, the only way to convince people he really had been killed – even today, the Brazilian media occasionally publish pictures of an old man who died in 1996 and bears a striking resemblance to Lampião.

The beaches

The main city beach is at Pajuçara, where a curving road and wide mosaic promenade are lined with palm trees. The water is not always the cleanest here, so many visitors hire jangadas and head 2km out to sea to swim in the natural pools that form at low tide.

Ponta Verde and neighbouring Jatiúca mark the start of a series of fine beaches north of Maceió. Buses marked “Mirante” or “Fátima” run from the centre along the coast as far as Pratagi, also called Mirante da Sereia, 13km north, where coral pools form in the reef at low tide. You can get off wherever you like; the main beaches, in order, are Cruz das Almas, Jacarecica, Guaxuma, Garça Torta, and Riacho Doce, all quieter than the city beaches during the week but very popular at weekends.

Maceió works well for relaxed 8-day Brazil trips, with enough beaches close by to vary each day without turning the route into a long coastal haul. Most visitors head north, leaving the southern coast relatively calm, though crowds are beginning to make their way there too. Hourly “Deodoro” buses leave from the stop in front of the old train station near the harbour, crossing the Trapiche bridge into a flat, swampy coastline.

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