Mosteiro de São Bento

This guide to the Mosteiro de Sao Bento in Rio de Janeiro starts at the gift shop, with a small black cross stamped C S P B and the monastic story of two attempted poisonings behind the Medal of Saint Benedict. It moves inside the gold-covered church built for that same saint, tracing the enslaved and mixed-race colonial artisans who carved it despite being barred from leading the workshops, among them a free craftsman named Mestre Valentim. Listen for the two silver chandeliers cast in the late 1700s, each said to weigh as much as an adult man.