Portuguese mosaic

"K2T Wisata"

You would need to be quite absent-minded to walk Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro and not notice the beautiful waves along the sidewalk formed by Portuguese mosaic (photograph above). In spite of its fame, Rio wasn’t the first Brazilian city where the mosaic was used. In 1900 Manaus imported from Lisbon what was at the time a very popular embellishment for open spaces. The small black and white stones served as a model for Copacabana years later.

To find the mosaic in Manaus (photograph above) you need not go further than Praça de São Sebastião, the square right in front of Teatro Amazonas. The patterns of waves depicts the scene seen at the Meeting of the Waters (a natural phenomenon we talked about in the Meeting of the Waters and the Janauary Ecological Park, near Manaus).

If you are lucky to see the mosaic on location, wander around the square staring at the mosaic and let yourselves be engulfed by the fantastic optical illusion of waves coming and going.