In turn-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro, the homosexual topography was primarily confined to Largo do Rossio (alternatively spelled Largo do Rocio), a square at the edge of the city’s center. Now known as Praça Tiradentes, Largo do Rossio featured a sixty-ton statue of the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro I mounted on a bronze horse. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the square served as an important space for male-to-male sexual encounters. Indeed, clandestine homosexual activities were so common in Largo do Rossio that the square gained a reputation among the city’s inhabitants as being the unofficial meeting space for homosexual men.

An artist’s rendering of Largo do Rossio at the turn of the century.