Bom Retiro

Bom Retiro sits just north of Luz station, the same rail line that once carried coffee to the port of Santos — and later, carried people. Italian workers arrived first in the 1880s, then Eastern European Jewish families from the 1920s onward, who built the neighborhood into a garment-manufacturing hub and, for decades, its beating cultural heart. From the 1970s, Korean immigrant families gradually took over many of the same workshops and trading houses, and more recently Bolivian communities have added another layer. Few Brazilian neighborhoods wear their migration history this openly — in the languages on shop signs, the food stalls, and the fabric wholesalers that still line its narrow streets.