Things to do
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Museu da Amazônia
A living museum set in standing forest on the northern edge of the city, where the trees are the exhibit and the trails are the galleries. A steel tower rises above the canopy, and the climb is the closest most visitors get to seeing the forest from above.
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Teatro Amazonas
A rubber boom opera house finished in 1896, with a dome of thirty six thousand tiles shipped from Europe, Italian marble on the stairs and a painted curtain showing the meeting of the rivers. Guided tours run through the day and the resident orchestra still plays here.
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Bosque da Ciência
Thirteen hectares of urban forest run by the national Amazon research institute, holding rescued manatees, giant otters and caimans in enclosures fed by the science done next door. It is the easiest place in the city to see várzea animals at close range.
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Encontro das Águas
The black Rio Negro and the sandy Solimões run side by side for six kilometres below the city without mixing, held apart by differences in temperature, density and speed. Boats leave from the port and usually pair the sight with a stop in the flooded forest.
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Lago do Janauari
A flooded forest lake across the river from the city, kept as an ecological park and reached by boat in about half an hour. The draw is the standing rafts of vitória régia, the giant water lily whose leaves grow wide enough to carry a small child.
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Mercado Adolpho Lisboa
An iron and glass market hall of 1883 modelled on Les Halles in Paris, its structure cast in Europe and shipped up the Amazon in numbered pieces. The stalls sell river fish, guaraná bark, açaí and the medicinal roots of the interior.
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Palácio Rio Negro
Built in 1903 as the town house of a German rubber baron, later the governor's residence and now a free cultural centre with period rooms, a cinema and changing exhibitions. The verandas and tiled floors are the best surviving domestic record of the boom.
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Praia da Lua
A crescent of white sand on the Rio Negro west of the city, reached only by boat from the Marina do Davi. The beach emerges as the river falls from about August and goes back under at the height of the flood, so the season matters as much as the sand.
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Villa Amazônia
A nineteenth century mansion two streets behind the opera house, restored as a small hotel around a courtyard pool and hung with work by Amazonian artists. It is the rare address in the historic centre pitched at travellers rather than at river traffic.