Frustrated by to have found in Brazil precious metals in the part that touched to them of the Treaty of Tordesillas, to the Portuguese they it did not have left the alternative of the culture and production of the sugar cane to make possible, economically, the colonization of just the open pies almost virgin earth.
During the colonial period, most of the sugar plantations were concentrated in the Northeast, where it was based, in 1535, in the captainship of Pernambuco, Villa de Olinda, showcase of the accumulated wealth by the gentlemen of the sugar of the neighboring property.
With its drawing up irregular, its buildings erected at the top of hills with a view to the green sea and its houses winding in the hills, Olinda is a magnificent example of informal, typical urbanism of the Portuguese colonization of Brazil. Its own name would have been originated by the exclamation of Duarte Coelho, when talking about to the magnificent landscape of the site that it had chosen for the foundation of the town.
The wealth concentrated in the Northeast immediately woke up the greed of other towns, especially from the Dutch that invaded Pernambuco in 1630 and, that same year, took Villa de Olinda. But the conquered town did not deserve an effective defense, according to the strategic landlords of the Dutch, that they left soon it and they set afire, preferring to remain in the neighbor and marshy locality of Recife, who filled up of earth, as they were used to doing in his native country, and less than developed the city to a fascinating rate in two decades.
After the expulsion of the Dutch, in 1654, Olinda was reconstructed little by little - then already it underwent the increasing competition of Recife, that affirmed like important commercial center and that soon it would become the administrative capital of the captainship.
What Olinda lost in administrative buildings saw fully compensated with the construction of the monumental sets formed by the convents of the religious orders. Carmelite, franciscan, benedictines and Jesuits occupied the stops of smooth hills, and produced and preserved, mainly inside the convents, the most worried forms of baroque art of Brazil in the colonial period.
Olinda stopped in the competition with Recife and, thus preserved its original characteristics until century XX, when a city happened to consider itself dormitory. In 1937, when City was declared officially Monument, their main attributes were still their singular location, his exceeded (of two more colonial floor or houses type than are in the historical centers of the cities) with close facades and ample gardens populated with trees and the high artistic quality of some of their buildings.
The international recognition of the artistic value of Olinda dates from 1982, when it was classified by UNESCO, Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.