Natal: walking tour

Every city likes a clean beginning, and Natal got one right on its calendar. On Christmas Day in 1599, Portuguese colonizers led by Jerônimo de Albuquerque and João Rodrigues Colaço marked out this patch of high sandstone above the Potengi River. They named the settlement Natal, the Portuguese word for Christmas, and laid out their first public street right across this ground.

For nearly three centuries, people simply called it Rua Grande. It was where the royal administration proclaimed decrees and where local life gathered. Today, the square serves as the city's geodetic center, marked by a stone obelisk. But if you check the name on the signs, you will notice it does not honor the Portuguese founder who chose the ridge. It honors a rebel who tried to overthrow the crown.

André de Albuquerque Maranhão was a wealthy local landowner who threw his weight behind the 1817 Pernambucan Revolt. The rebels wanted to break away from Portuguese royal rule and set up an independent republic. Albuquerque took control of the local government right here in Natal and held power for a frantic few weeks. When royalist forces counterattacked, he was captured and fatally stabbed in the chaos.

When the city renamed its founding square in 1888, on the eve of Brazil becoming a republic, it chose the revolutionary martyr over the imperial colonizers. It turns this quiet garden into an interesting double monument: the place where Portuguese rule arrived on a holy day, and the place dedicated to the man who died trying to rip it down.