Things to do in Manaus

Landmark · Centro

The 1896 opera house built at the height of the rubber boom, with a Parisian-tiled dome and a French-imported interior, standing in the middle of the rainforest.

Local tip: The guided tour is worth doing once, but the point is to go to something. The Amazonas Philharmonic plays here regularly and tickets are often free or nearly so — it is one of the great value cultural experiences anywhere in Brazil.

Nature · Confluence downstream of the city

The black Rio Negro and the sandy Solimões running side by side for kilometres without mixing, because of differences in temperature, density and speed.

Local tip: Every operator sells this as a boat tour, and it is genuinely worth seeing. Combine it with a stop at the Janauari lake and go in the cheia when the flooded forest is navigable — in the dry season the same trip is a very different and much less interesting outing.

Food · Centro, on the waterfront

An 1883 iron-framed market modelled on Les Halles, full of river fish, Amazonian fruit and medicinal plants you will not have met before.

Local tip: Go before eight in the morning when the fish is landed. Ask someone at the fruit counters to explain cupuaçu, tucumã, bacaba and camu-camu — nobody will mind, and it is the fastest introduction to the food here you can get.

Neighborhood · West of the centre, on the Rio Negro

The city's riverside promenade and beach, which appears and disappears with the water level, backed by the newest residential towers in Manaus.

Local tip: The beach only exists in the vazante and seca, roughly September to January, and in a low-water year it is enormous. In the cheia the same place is a promenade over water. Sunset here is the standing evening ritual of the whole west side.

Nature · Reserva Adolpho Ducke, north of the city

A forest reserve inside the municipality with a 42-metre observation tower that puts you above the canopy.

Local tip: It is a genuine patch of primary forest twenty minutes from an industrial estate, and almost no visitor to Manaus knows it is there. Go early for the birds, and climb the tower before the heat builds.

Nature · About 110 km north on the BR-174

The 'land of waterfalls' — dozens of falls, caves and swimming holes in the forest, on the only good paved road out of Manaus.

Local tip: This is the weekend everybody here does and it is the best argument for owning or renting a car. Check the water level before setting off — the falls are spectacular in the wet months and modest in the dry — and note that stretches of the BR-174 crossing indigenous land are closed overnight.