Salvador's culture runs deeper than its postcard baroque. This route follows Carybé's murals and Mário Cravo's sculpture, the Afro-Brazilian Museum's Yoruba collections, a Neoclassical theatre season, and the artist streets of Santo Antônio and Rio Vermelho.
Brazil's modern art museum inside a 17th-century sugar estate reworked by Lina Bo Bardi in 1963, with her famous rope-and-peg staircase. Tue–Fri 13:00–18:00, Sat–Sun 14:00–18:00; sculpture park on the bay is open earlier. Free entry.
A 1912 eclectic mansion on Graça converted into an exhibition space that once housed Rodin bronzes on loan from Paris; now runs rotating Bahian contemporary shows and a striking glass annexe by Brasil Arquitetura. Roughly R$ 10 entry.
Art Nouveau residence of tobacco baron Bernardo Martins Catharino, restored in 2008 as a public art space. Garden dotted with sculpture, black-and-white marble floors, and a shaded café under mango trees. Tue–Fri 13:00–19:00.
The Carmelite complex holds the Cristo da Coluna carved by mulatto sculptor Francisco Xavier das Chagas in the 1730s, its blood pigment made from whale oil and 2,000 rubies. The lane below is lined with restored pastel casarões.
Housed in the old Faculty of Medicine on Terreiro de Jesus. The centrepiece is Carybé's cycle of 27 carved cedar panels of the orixás, made in 1968. Yoruba textiles, ritual objects and Candomblé regalia fill the rest. Tue–Fri 09:00–17:00.
The bloco afro's headquarters on Rua Gregório de Matos keeps a small collection of drums, Carnival costumes and photographs from the 1980s bloco movement, plus the rehearsal hall where Michael Jackson filmed in 1996.
Salvador's 1,500-seat modernist theatre on Campo Grande, home to the Orquestra Sinfônica da Bahia and the Balé do Teatro Castro Alves. Box office opens 13:00; seats for symphony nights typically start around R$ 30.
The open-air amphitheatre carved into the slope behind the theatre, seating 5,000 under the stars. Long-running Sunday and weeknight seasons of MPB, jazz and Bahian songwriters; gates open around 18:00 for a 20:00 start.
Two Pelourinho institutions a block apart: the Casa do Benin shows West African architecture and Verger's photographs of the Bahia–Benin trade route, while the Amado foundation holds the writer's manuscripts and cover art by Carybé.
The 1861 customs building above the Cidade Baixa quay. Skip the ground-floor souvenir aisles for the upper galleries where carvers work berimbaus, ceramicists throw orixá figures and the balcony restaurants look onto the Baía de Todos os Santos.
The bohemian district where Jorge Amado lived and Caetano Veloso still performs. Mário Cravo Júnior's studio legacy, small commercial galleries along Rua Guedes Cabral, and the Casa de Yemanjá shrine by the fishermen's colony.
Eight 4-metre fibreglass orixás by Tatti Moreno stand mid-lake beneath the Fonte Nova stadium, installed in 1998 and lit after dark. The waterside promenade fills with runners, capoeira rodas and food carts at sundown.