Rio de Janeiro - Campo da Santana

Campo da Santana

Rua Frei Caneca runs west from the central area to the Campo de Santana (Praça da República) and the Sambódromo, a tiered street designed for the Carnival parades. The Campo de Santana, a tree-shaded park of over 155,000sq.m/185,000sq.yds with a lake and numerous fountains, was the scene of Dom Pedro I's triumphal procession after his coronation as Emperor and later, in 1889, of the proclamation of the Republic and with it the fall of the monarchy.

Also in the Campo de Santana are the Casa da Moeda (Mint; 1856-68) and a monument in honour of the Republican leader Benjamin Constant (1926). Opposite the park, on Avenida Presidente Vargas, is an equestrian statue (by Rodolfo Bernardelli, 1899) of the Duque de Caxias, crowning the National Pantheon in which the great Brazilian general and his wife are buried.