This cover from Brazil depicts 2 stamps issued in 2020, including the stamp on the bottom showing the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Valongo Wharf". The Valongo Wharf (Portuguese: Cais do Valongo) is an old dock located in the port area of Rio de Janeiro. Built in 1811, it was the site of landing and trading of enslaved Africans until 1831, with the blockade of Africa banning the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil (but clandestine trade continued until 1888). During the twenty years of its operation, between 500 thousand and one million slaves landed at Valongo. Brazil received about 4.9 million slaves through the Atlantic trade. In 1843, the wharf was renovated for the landing of Princess Teresa Cristina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, who was to marry the emperor D. Pedro II. The wharf was then called Cais da Imperatriz (Empress Wharf). Between 1850 and 1920, the area around the old pier became a space occupied by black slaves or freedmen of several nations - an area that Heitor dos Prazeres called Pequena África (Little Africa). In 2011, during the excavations carried out as part of the revitalization works in the Rio de Janeiro port area, the two wharfs - Valongo and Imperatriz - were discovered, one on top of the other, and, along with them, a large number of amulets and worship objects from Congo, Angola and Mozambique. IPHAN and the city of Rio de Janeiro inscribed the wharf's archaeological site to the Unesco World Heritage Site Tentative List. The wharf was then officially designated a World Heritage Site in 2017.
