The General Police Department of the Court of the City of Rio de Janeiro built the Valongo Pier in 1811 to comply with the old determination of the Viceroy, the Marquis of Lavradio, made in 1779.

 

Its objective was to remove the landing and trade of enslaved Africans from Rua Direita, now Primeiro de Março.

 

The slave market intensified after the construction of the Wharf, the gateway for more than 500,000 Africans, mostly from Congo and Angola, in West-Central Africa. Over the years, the Wharf underwent successive transformations.

 

In the first intervention, in 1843, it was exquisitely remodeled to receive the Princess of the Two Sicilies, Teresa Cristina Maria de Bourbon, fiancée of the (then) future Emperor D. Pedro II, and was renamed Cais da Imperatriz, in memory of the event.

 

With the city's urban reforms at the beginning of the 20th century, Cais da Imperatriz was filled in in 1911.

 

A century later, in 2011, the redevelopment works at Porto Maravilha allowed the rescue of the archaeological site, now a preserved and open monument, meeting an old demand from the Black Movement.