Brigadeiro José da Silva Paes, the first governor of the old Capitania, presented
the project for the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora do Desterro. This mother 
church, which replaced the original small chapel erected by the settlement
founder Francisco Dias Velho, went up between 1753 and 1773. In 1897, a 
clock from Germany was installed in one the towers. The two-hundred-year-old
church was remodeled in 1918. Postcard published around 1905.