Manaus is half river port, half jungle capital — and the sights reflect that. The historic core around the Teatro Amazonas preserves the strange opulence of the rubber boom, when European architects were shipped in to build an opera house in the middle of the rainforest. Down by the river, the cast-iron Mercado Adolpho Lisboa and the floating port quay show the working side of the city, while the meeting of the Rio Negro and the Solimões, just downstream, is a natural spectacle visible from space.
Museums in Manaus tend to be small but specific: the indigenous peoples of the upper Rio Negro, the science of the rainforest, the seringueiros who tapped the rubber. Combine a half-day in the centre with a longer expedition into the surrounding flooded forest and you have the trip in miniature.