Praça XV de Novembro

This guide to Praca XV de Novembro in Rio de Janeiro centers on the stone fountain crowned by a small pyramid at its heart, carved by Mestre Valentim, the son of a Black woman and a white father, who trained despite the colony's constraints on his mother's ancestry and became the best sculptor working in the city. It traces how, working through the 1780s, he replaced an outgrown 1747 fountain with the gneiss-and-marble structure that once supplied ships and soldiers on this waterfront. You'll also hear about the alligator fountains and shaded walks he later built nearby at the Passeio Publico.