Prepositions of place: em cima de, embaixo de, atrás de, perto de and friends

You can already say you are na praia (at the beach) or no hotel (at the hotel) — but not where anything is once you get there, and "where is it?" is the question you will ask and be asked most often in Brazil. Without these phrases you can only point. With them you can answer a stranger, find a bathroom, describe your street and follow the directions people give you back. They are cheap to learn, too: one pattern, one little de, and contractions you already own from the last lesson.

1. One pattern carries almost all of them

Portuguese builds nearly every location phrase out of the same three pieces:

[location word] + de + [article] + [noun]

That little de is not decoration and it is not optional — it is the glue between the location word and the thing you are locating. And since de runs straight into an article, it contracts, exactly the way you learned in the last lesson:

• O gato está em cima da mesa. (The cat is on top of the table.) — de + a

• O carro está atrás do hotel. (The car is behind the hotel.) — de + o

• A farmácia fica perto dos bancos. (The pharmacy is near the banks.) — de + os

Common Pitfalls

• Dropping the de. English glues "behind the house" together with one word; Portuguese needs the de, and the de then contracts. ❌ atrás a casa → ✅ atrás da casa (behind the house). The same goes for perto, longe, dentro, fora and em cima.

• Choosing a location verb. ✅ Onde fica o banco? (Where is the bank?) is a useful default. Onde é o banco? is also possible; ser is not limited to events, though it is natural in ✅ Onde é a festa? (Where is the party?).

• Saying de eu. As the complement of a preposition in these location phrases, "me" is mim. ❌ perto de eu → ✅ perto de mim (near me). Likewise atrás de mim, na frente de mim.

• Contracting for the wrong gender. The contraction follows the noun, not the location phrase: mesa is feminine, carro is masculine. ✅ em cima da mesa (on top of the table), ✅ em cima do carro (on top of the car) — never em cima do mesa.

• Describing a surface. Em + article is another valid option: O livro está na mesa. (The book is on the table.) Em cima de and sobre can also describe this position; they are not errors.

• Optional dum / duma. De + um / uma can be written as dum / duma. Both ✅ ao lado de uma escola (next to a school) and ✅ ao lado duma escola are valid; contraction here is optional, not forbidden in writing.