São Marcelo Fort, also known as “Forte do Mar”, is one of the most iconic historic buildings in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Its strategic location on a small island in Todos os Santos Bay, close to Salvador’s port, makes it one of the city’s most recognisable tourist attractions.

A brief history of the São Marcelo Fort

1. Origin and construction

• 17th century: Construction of the fort began in 1623, during the colonial period when Salvador was still the capital of colonial Brazil. The idea was to defend the city from possible attacks by pirates and foreign invaders. The fort was originally made of wood, but in 1650 it was replaced by a stone and lime structure, which made it more durable and resistant.
• Circular shape : The São Marcelo Fort is unique in Brazil for its circular shape, reminiscent of the São Lourenço Fort on the island of Itaparica. This shape allowed a 360 degree panoramic view, facilitating defence against enemies coming from all directions.

2. Military function

• Protection of the city: The primary function of São Marcelo Fort has always been the defence of Salvador, especially its harbour and lower city. During the 17th and 18th centuries, it played an important role in protecting against pirate attacks and defending the territory against foreign invasions.
• Guarding the Bay of All Saints: Due to its privileged position at the entrance to the bay, the fort served as a checkpoint for vessels approaching the port of Salvador, requiring the display of appropriate permits and flags.

3. Role in Brazilian History

• Male Uprising (1835): The fort was used to imprison the participants of the Male Uprising, an uprising of enslaved people of Islamic origin that took place in Salvador.
• Federalist Revolution (1893-1895): During the conflicts that followed the proclamation of the Republic, the São Marcelo Fort was used to house political prisoners and as a strategic defence point.

4. Decline and Restoration

• 20th century: At the beginning of the 20th century, with the advancement of military technology and the growth of the city, the strategic importance of the fort diminished. It was eventually decommissioned as a military installation.
• Restoration: Recognising the historic and tourist value of the fort, it was restored several times during the 20th and early 21st centuries. The last major restoration took place between 1997 and 1999, when the fort was reopened to the public.

5. Present Status and Cultural Importance.

• Tourism: Today, Forte de São Marcelo is one of Salvador’s main tourist attractions, offering guided tours that tell the history of the site and provide spectacular views of the city and bay.
• Cultural Centre: The fort is also used for cultural events, art exhibitions and educational activities, reinforcing its importance not only as a piece of historic military architecture, but also as a cultural symbol of Salvador.

With its distinctive architecture and rich history, Forte de São Marcelo remains a living testimony to the military, cultural and social history of Salvador and Brazil.

Video – History of the São Marcelo Fort

História do Forte de São Marcelo ou Forte do Mar

History of the construction of Forte de São Marcelo or Forte do Mar in Salvador

The São Marcelo Fort in Salvador was built on a crown of sand and is the only one with a circular plan.

The history of São Marcelo Fort is full of curious episodes, to say the least.

For example, in 1624, about a year after it was built to protect Salvador from invasion, the fort was taken over by the Dutch, who used it to launch violent attacks on the city.

But some 15 years later, it was the fort that held off the Dutch during their second invasion attempt.

Some chroniclers of the past confused the old Forte do Mar, which was Laje, closer to the mainland, with the current Forte de Nossa Senhora do Pópulo e São Marcelo, known simply as Forte de São Marcelo or, popularly, Forte do Mar.

Many modern historians have fallen into this error.

What the documents show, and what Luiz Monteiro da Costa partially proved, is that there were two Forts of the Sea:

• The first, from the early 17th century, closer to what was then the Ribeira, was built as a quadrilateral redoubt on a rocky outcrop, the famous “lagem”.
• The second, corresponding to our São Marcelo, was built in a circular shape on a crown of sand.

The documents used by Monteiro da Costa in his argumentation make it clear that the fortress known in the first half of the 17th century as Forte da Laje or Forte do Mar was close to the beach and could not have been the same as the current Forte de São Marcelo.

It’s worth mentioning that Aldenburgk, in his description of the battle between the Dutch and the Portuguese that took place there in 1624, says that when the Dutch took the then unfinished “Forte do Mar”, protected by cestones, they blocked the cannons of the battery and retreated because of the ground fire.

Well, according to the most credible expert, Marshal Sebastien Vauban, the maximum range of a musket at that time was 120 to 125 toesas (237.6 to 247.5 m).

Our São Marcelo Fort is about 600 metres from the lower part of the Lacerda Elevator, according to the current aerophotogrammetric survey of the city, which would exclude it as the successor of the old “Lajem” Fort.

The iconography is also very clear. The earliest image of the first Forte do Mar in its square redoubt version, in the Livro que dá razão do Estado do Brasil, shows a jetty connecting the fort to the mainland.

The size of this jetty, even allowing for any errors in the artist’s scale, could not have been a link from what is now São Marcelo to the mainland.

Peter Netscher, a 19th century Dutch military man and historian, also quoted by Monteiro da Costa, says in his account of the epic invasion,
referring to the assault on the Forte do Mar: “Piet Heyn himself, followed by his ship’s trumpeter, was the first to climb the enemy fortress, forcing the entire garrison to flee, either by ford or by swimming”.

Let’s face it, a good swimmer could cover the 500 metres or so between the present-day São Marcelo and the beach, but crossing the ford would be totally unlikely, no matter how much the bathymetry of our harbour had changed.

From this point of view, regarding the shallow depth between the fort and the land, there is the following information in Aldenburgk’s caption to illustrate the text on the capture of Salvador, translated by Silva Nigra: “A battery built of hard stone, far from the land, and passable by boat at high tide”.

The statement is obvious and needs no further comment.

There is also a document dated 1668, signed by Francisco Barreto, Governor General from 1657 to 1663, which is an opinion on the defence situation of Bahia and its Recôncavo, drawn up at the request of the Overseas Council.

At one point he clearly states: “I built Fort São Marcelo in the middle of Bahia so that, together with Fort Real (Fort São Felipe e Santiago, successor to Fort da Laje) and Fort São Francisco, we could defend the anchorage of the ships”.

More recently, when Iphan carried out restoration and consolidation work at the fortresses of Nossa Senhora do Pópulo and São Marcelo, five internal surveys were commissioned to identify the subsoil supporting the foundations.

The reports by the company Concreta show that the building sits on an artificial layer of rock from various sources, some of which is limestone.

After this layer, there is a drop in resistance because there is no “lagem”. It is, as described above, a crown of sand, and therefore the defence built there could not have been the Laje Fort, as some historians have claimed.

The first fort, called “do Mar”, was built on a rocky outcrop known to the ancients as the “lagem”, in the form of an unbuilt quadrilateral, called a redoubt in the jargon of the treatise writers.

The report that served as a basis for the Livro que dá razão do Estado do Brasil, written by Diogo Moreno in 1612, already shows a map of the city of Salvador with the fortress “da laje”, connected to the beach by a jetty.

In the copy of this precious manuscript in the Biblioteca do Porto, there is an interesting detail: the Forte da Laje has been added on a piece of paper pasted over the original drawing, as if it had been updated.

In addition to the ephemeral nature of the fortress, the iconography shows that it had no frontal offensive capacity, since the bastions were represented on the sides and the pier continued to the west, the side not equipped with artillery.

Given the date of these records, we can imagine that the Laje Fort was built between 1609 and 1612, during the reign of Diogo de Menezes.

Since the defence of Cabeça do Brasil, both from land and sea, was still precarious, and certainly due to the admonition of Captain Francisco Frias da Mesquita, Chief Engineer, it was decided to improve the protection of the port during the administration of Mendonça Furtado (1621-1624), but as always, too late.

Authorisation came in the form of a royal charter dated 3 August 1622, which reads in part “[…] and the construction of a new fort and jetty on the slope in front of the city to protect the ships […]”.

Once again, through the hand of Frias da Mesquita, the redoubt on the plate was given a new project to move from the status of a “temporary fortification” to a “permanent one”, even without any great defensive pretensions.

Based on the Portuguese iconography after the recapture of Salvador from the Batavos, such as the very well known Plan of the Restitution of Bahia of 1626, we find a new fort in the shape of a square, but with a kind of counter-guard at the front.

This detail made it similar in shape to the Forte dos Reis Magos in Natal, also attributed to Frias da Mesquita.

At the rear, the Potiguar Fort has a hornaveque, a defensive element that doesn’t seem to be present in our Laje Fort.

In fact, the proximity of Ribeira to the rear of the Laje fort makes such a defence completely superfluous.

The same configuration can be seen in the engraving by the Portuguese cartographer Benedictus Mealius Lusitanus, showing the recapture of Salvador, made to illustrate Father Bartolomeu Guerreiro’s 1625 account, Jornada dos vassalos da Coroa de Portugal.

The Dutch engraving of 1638, showing the city of Salvador at the time of the abortive attack by Nassau mentioned above, suggests an identical solution for the old seawall.

The important 1779 cadastral survey of Salvador, held in the Military Archives of Rio de Janeiro, also shows the same configuration.

There are strong indications that this plan was drawn up by Sergeant Major José Antônio Caldas.

As for the current Fort of the Sea, or Nossa Senhora do Pópulo and São Marcelo, it was born with a circular plan and even with some modifications that have taken place throughout its history, it still has the same configuration.

This type of fortification is not very common, but it’s not unusual either.

Luiz Monteiro da Costa attributes the plans for the São Marcelo Fort to the French military engineer Pedro Garcim (or Garim), who lived in Salvador for some time in the 17th century.

Carlos Ott, another scholar of the city’s history, is less emphatic, preferring to attribute to this engineer only the initial execution of the construction, which is considered more prudent.

In reality, the fact that an engineer started the work does not necessarily mean that he was the author of the project.

In the case of the São Marcelo fort, it is more likely that the “moths” came from the kingdom. This hypothesis is based on the fact that a circular fort with a higher central tower, forming a high battery, had already been built in Lisbon at the end of the 16th century.

This was the fort of São Lourenço da Cabeça Seca, which, like São Marcelo, used the support of a crown on the banks of the Tagus.

This work, which used the same technique of filling in the rock to reinforce the base, was begun by the engineer Father João Vicente Casale, who moved from Naples to Spain in 1588 and then to Lisbon with his nephew Alexandre Massai, alias Alexandre Italiano, also a military engineer.

Leonardo Turriano was in charge of the Fort of São Lourenço, better known today as the Fort of Bugio. He left the construction at the level of the foundations.

The information from 1646 comes from his son, brother João Turriano, who, like his father, was an engineer of the kingdom, appointed by King João IV.

A study of Turriano’s drawings shows that if Garcim is the author of the São Marcelo Fort project, which is unlikely, he was inspired by a prototype that already existed in Portugal, especially in its initial version, with a tower and a high square.

It’s also worth noting the date of João Turriano’s drawings for Bugio, 1646, which predates the royal charter of 1650 authorising Count Castelo Melhor to build the current Forte do Mar.

We must point out that our Forte do Mar is not a perfect circle (although it is shown as such in some cadastres) due to construction problems, but this does not change the fact that it belongs to Bugio.

Work on the forts of Nossa Senhora do Pópulo and São Marcelo was anything but quick. Filling in the rock to stabilise the foundations took a long time.

As late as the 18th century, engineers were still trying to improve its defences and eliminate its imperfections.

A reading of some of the royal charters from the period after 1650 allows us to deduce the origin of the stone used to fill it: some came from the Recôncavo (granite), some from the surrounding area (calcareous sandstone), possibly from the Preguiça or Itapagipe area, and some from Portugal (limestone), used as ballast for ships.

This information is supported by the documentation and sampling carried out during the survey.

It can be assumed that the São Marcelo fort initially had the appearance of a simple tower, since construction began, as would be logical, with the central tower. This is suggested by an engraving in the National Library of Lisbon, reproduced in the Essay on the Iconography of Portuguese Cities Overseas, which shows a tower surrounded by rubble in the port of Salvador.

Another sign is the meagre artillery of nine pieces that it had in the seventies of the 17th century.

Twenty years had passed since the construction of the fort was authorised and the work was still underway when the Governor General, Afonso Furtado de Mendonça (1671-1675), requested a technical report on the state of the defences of Salvador and the Recôncavo.

With regard to these defences, the document reads: “The sea fortress of N. Senhora do Pópulo, is made of stone, it is still to be completed and in the form of the order of H.A. we are beginning to deal with its work, it is of great importance for the safety of the ships and the enemy armadas cannot easily reach the city […]”.

At the beginning of the 18th century, our fortress was still in need of adaptation. At that time it still had a higher central tower with gunboats and a lower outer ring, also with gunboats, with a greater density of artillery.

Miguel Pereira da Costa protested against this solution, which made it very similar to the fortress of Bugio on the Tagus, in a report written in 1710: “On the beach of this city is the Forte do Mar, more than a musket shot away from the land, in a circular shape, with a high square, but this one, besides having little capacity, interferes with the lower one”.

Miguel Pereira’s wise advice was to be heeded many, many years later.

In 1758, when Captain José Antônio Caldas, an expert draughtsman, illustrated the text of his book with registers of fortresses, the São Marcelo fort still had a tower and gunboats.

These elements persisted until the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th century, as can be seen not only in the profile of the city drawn by Captain José Francisco de Souza in 1782, but also in that of Vilhena in 1801.

Brigadier José Gonçalves Galeão, coordinator of a report on the fortifications of Salvador in 1810, criticised the high tower, the troneiras and the casamatas, suggesting that it was only after this date that the transformations took place that led to the disappearance of the high square and the replacement of the troneiras with a barbette parapet.

Galeão’s team, responsible for the report, included a lieutenant engineer named João Teixeira Leal, who left a collection of drawings of our fortresses of very good quality, with numerous reproductions and copies, both in Portuguese and Brazilian archives. It seems that the report in question was illustrated by Leal.

One of these illustrations, which he signed as Captain – i.e. after 1810 – shows the Fort of São Marcelo more or less as we know it today.

One of the most important moments in the defence of Salvador and other Brazilian cities came after the second French invasion of Rio de Janeiro in 1711.

Brigadier João Massé, who was in Brazil at the time, reported that the Fort of São Marcelo was not yet finished and that he had drawn up specifications for it with a view to inviting tenders for its construction.

Massé’s specifications called for a rockfill of 20 palms (4.4 metres) over the diameter of the plan presented, with the foundations rising up to two palms (0.44 metres) above low tide and allowing a base of 3 palms (0.66 metres) to rise with the wall, with a resistance of 1 palm over 5 (20%).

The later report on the fortifications of Salvador, signed by Massé, Mestre-de-campo Miguel Pereira da Costa and Captain Gaspar de Abreu, repeats the words of Miguel Pereira in his report of 17 June 1710 regarding the fortification in question.

Today, our old fort, one of the most significant examples of fortifications in colonial Brazil, survives with great difficulty, despite the improvements it has undergone.

It urgently needs its foundations and its protective rock filling to continue to bear witness to our memory. If it doesn’t receive this minimum of care, its outer ring will collapse, and then the rest.

Although it didn’t take part in any military action to defend our port, it is one of the most expressive postcards of Salvador, a living testimony to our history.

History of the Forte de São Marcelo or Forte do Mar in Salvador

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