Recife Brazil We stand here before the statue of the goddess Athena, or, if you’re more Roman inclined, Minerva, at the head of the Maurício de Nassau Bridge, in Recife. The goddess of wisdom, the arts, and strategy arrived here in 1917 as part of a major urban reform. Recife wanted to present itself as a modern capital, and to do so, it looked to Europe for inspiration. The governor at the time, José Rufino Bezerra Cavalcanti, ordered four allegorical sculptures to be imported from the Val d’Osne foundry in Paris. Today, they adorn the ends of this bridge.