Feira de Santana
Brazil · Americas
About Feira de Santana
Feira de Santana sɐ̃ˈtɐ̃nɐ]; Portuguese for "Saint Anne's Fair") is a city in Bahia, Brazil. It is the second-most populous city in the state, with a population of 616,272 according to IBGE's census in 2022. It is located 100 km northwest of Salvador, Bahia's capital city. These cities are connected by BR-324, a four-lane divided highway.
Feira de Santana, formerly spelled Feira de Santa Anna, is named in honor of the cattle fairs held at the St-Anne-of-the-Fountains Plantation (Fazenda Sant'Anna dos Olhos D’Água) in the 19th century.
The St-Anne-of-the-Fountains Plantation was established in the 18th century by Domingos Barbosa de Araujo and his wife Anna Brandoa. Located at the edge of Bahia's "backcountry" (sertão), it became a center for the cowboys on their way from the pastures there to the port of Cachoeira. The cowboys' practice of starting annual fires to clear old brush eventually worsened the area's natural aridity to the point where the cattle industry collapsed, but by then Brazilians and foreigners had begun adopting the area as their home. A city began to develop with wide streets which were bordered by...
Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.