Charitas is one of the 48 neighborhoods in which the city of

Niterói Niterói (, ) is a Municipalities of Brazil, municipality of the state of Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro in the Southeast Region, Brazil, southeast region of Brazil. It lies across Guanabara Bay facing the city of Rio de Janeiro and forms ...

, in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

divided Division is one of the four basic operations of arithmetic, the ways that numbers are combined to make new numbers. The other operations are addition, subtraction, and multiplication. At an elementary level the division of two natural numb ...

. The area was part of the

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

ic Sesmaria, where the

Jesuits The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

built a cemetery and a church consecrated to Saint Francis Xavier. The name of the neighborhood derives from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

word ''caritas'', meaning charity, which is inscribed on the church's door. In the 18th century, a landowner donated to the

Saint Joseph Joseph (; el, Ἰωσήφ, translit=Ioséph) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who, according to the canonical Gospels, was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. The Gospels also name some brothers of ...

Seminar, in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

, the piece of land that came to be the

Jurujuba Jurujuba is a promontory and one of the 48 administrative districts into which the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is divided. It lies in the southern zone of the city, on the coast of the Guanabara Bay Guanabara Bay ( pt, Baía d ...

Farm and upon which a mansion, known as ''Casarão'' (big house) was built. In 1853, the Saint Isabel Naval Hospital was opened and originally run by the sanitarist Francisco de Paula Cândido, in whose honor the neighborhood was first named "Paula Cândido". The hospital's function was to isolate the sick people that came with the ships that docked in Rio de Janeiro's harbor. Later, the hospital was turned into a safe house to receive children that had been infected with

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

known as Preventório, after which the local beach came to be known. In the 1940s, an aeroclub was built in the area. It still exists and can handle small, private planes and helicopter landings and take-offs. The neighborhood's limits are: the waters of the Guanabara Bay, the neighborhood of

Piratininga Piratininga is a municipality ''(município)'' in the state of São Paulo (state) in Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin Americ ...

(at the Viração Hill) and the neighborhoods of

and São Francisco (contiguous boundary). Its territory is located in the São Francisco Ensenada, which is the land comprised between the ''Viração Hill'' and the shore. The local population of approximately 3,854 (in 1991) represents 0.88% of

's total population. A small chanty town exists on the ''Preventório Hill''. In June 2024, the beach at Charitas was considered suitable for swimming, except for the stretch to the right of the Clube Naval.

References

{{coord, 22.92804, S, 43.09525, W, source:placeopedia, display=title Neighbourhoods of Niterói