The book The Slum is set in Rio de Janeiro, in the Botafogo district, where João Romão's shop and tenement, Miranda's townhouse and the quarry stand, starting in the 1870s.
Almost everything happens in one corner of the district: on one side João Romão's shop and the tenement he builds, separated by a wall with a gate from the townhouse of the merchant Miranda, and at the back the quarry. The book opens saying that João Romão's former employer grew rich "in the recesses of the Botafogo district," and João Romão's plan is to create a tenement so large that it kills off "all that riffraff of tenements that spread across Botafogo".
A few chapters leave there. Firmo's ambush is at the Praia da Saudade. Rita Baiana spends months of revelry in Jacarepaguá, and, after Firmo's death, she and Jerônimo go to live in a tenement in Cidade Nova, from which he works at the São Diogo quarry. Pombinha is married in the church of São João Batista. In the last chapter, João Romão waits for Miranda's family at a confectionery on Rua do Ouvidor and sees a victoria pass at Largo da Carioca. Jerônimo, wounded, is taken to the hospital of the Order of Saint Anthony.
The city is the Rio of the Empire, of Portuguese in commerce and of tenements; the context of the period is in the question about the book's historical context.