Object description

The Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows is a 16th-century Roman Catholic church located on the Ilha de Maré in the Bay of All Saints, Bahia, Brazil. The island is administratively part of the city of Salvador. The chapel is dedicated to Blessed Virgin Mary and belongs to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of São Salvador da Bahia. Its construction is dated to 1552, and is among the oldest existing churches in Brazil. It was part of the sugar plantation of André Fernandes Margalho. The nave of the church is narrow, measuring only 6 metres by 15 metres . The church was listed as a historic structure by the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute in 1958. The historian Mário Mendonça de Oliveira calls it a "one of the gems of old Brazilian religious architecture".