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- The capital
of Maranhγo was
founded in 1612 and is the latest town to be listed as a World Heritage
Site by UNESCO. Beaches surround the town, such as those at Calhau,
Ponta D'Areia and Sγo Marcos, where there are the ruins of the eighteenth
century Sγo Marcos Fort. The city's greatest era of prosperity was
reached in the second half of the eighteenth century, when cotton
exports were at their height. During this period, the province of
Maranhγo furnished a considerable part of the revenues of the Royal
Treasury, beating various other provinces of the Portuguese empire.
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- In the same
period Sγo Luνs became the capital of Maranhγo, with direct links
to the Portuguese court. A great deal happened between its apogee
and its economic decline, and some of the story can be discovered
in areas like Praia Grande, a historic centre listed by the National
Heritage Department. The main tourist attractions of the city are
contained in an area of 107 km2, with buildings from the seventeenth
to the nineteenth centuries. The capital has more than 3,000 listed
buildings, most of them with facades decorated with the glazed tiles
typical of the Portuguese colonial style. Among them are the Palαcio
dos Leυes (Lion Palace), which until 1615 was a fort which protected
the then capital of Equinoctial France, as Sγo Luνs was called under
French rule; the Catedral da Se, built by the Jesuits in 1726; the
church of Carmo, one of the oldest in the city, constructed in 1627;
and the Arthur Azevedo Theatre, built between 1815 and 1817 and thought
to be the first theatre to be erected in a Brazilian capital.
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- Sγo Luνs has
been the birthplace of some important names in Brazilian literature,
such as the poet Gonηalves Dias (1823-1864); the writer Graηa Aranha
(1868-1931), a founding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
and member of the Modernist Movement in 1922; the novelist Aluνsio
Azevedo (1857-1913) and his brother, the dramatist Arthur de Azevedo
(1855-1908). The extensive literary output of local writers, and of
writers from other regions of the country, is preserved in the Josuι
Montello Cultural Centre.
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