Three kilometres north of the centre, the white 18th-century church of Bonfim is the spiritual heart of popular Catholicism in Bahia and one of its main pilgrimage sites. The railings outside are draped with hundreds of thousands of coloured silk ribbons; vendors knot them to your wrist for a coin.
The church is also a key candomblé site, syncretised with Oxalá, the orixá of creation. Every January the Lavagem do Bonfim festival fills the road in from the Cidade Baixa with white-clad women carrying scented water to wash the church steps.