The city you see today is primarily a product of the rubber boom and in particular the child of visionary state governor Eduardo Ribeiro , who from 1892 transformed Manaus into a major city. Under Ribeiro the Opera House was completed, and whole streets were wiped out in the process of laying down broad Parisian-style avenues, interspersed with Italian piazzas centred on splendid fountains. In 1899 Manaus was the first Brazilian city to have trolley buses and only the second to have electric lights in the streets.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century Manaus was an opulent metropolis run by elegant people, who dressed and housed themselves as fashionably as their counterparts in any large European city. The rich constructed palaces and grandiose mansions; time was passed at elaborate entertainments, dances and concerts. But this heyday lasted barely thirty years, and by 1914 the rubber market was collapsing fast; Ribeiro himself had committed suicide in 1900. There was a second brief boost for Brazilian rubber during World War II, but today's prosperity is largely due to the creation of a Free Trade Zone , the Zona Franca, in 1966. Over the following ten years the population doubled, from 250,000 to half a million, and many new industries moved in, especially electronics companies. An impressive new international airport was opened in 1976 and the floating port, supported on huge metal cylinders to cope with variations of as much as 14m in the level of the river, was modernized to cope with the new business.

Today, with over three million inhabitants, Manaus is an aggressive commercial and industrial centre for an enormous region - the Hong Kong of the Amazon. Over half of Brazil's televisions are made here and electronic goods are around a third cheaper here than in the south. All of this helps encourage domestic tourism - Manaus airport is crowded with Brazilians going home with their arms laden with TVs, hi-fis, computers and fax machines