About Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro is the "Marvelous City" (Cidade Maravilhosa), a place where nature and urbanity collide in spectacular fashion. Jungle-clad mountains plunge directly into the Atlantic Ocean, with the city squeezed into the valleys and scalloped edges between them. It is a city of samba, soccer, and sun, defined by a laid-back hedonism and a dramatic social divide. The statue of Christ the Redeemer stands atop Corcovado with open arms, embracing the chaos and beauty below.
Satellite imagery captures Rio's impossible topography: the granite monoliths of Sugarloaf and Corcovado rising like sentinels, the crescent curves of Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, and the sprawling favelas climbing the hillsides like colorful ivy. The Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon sits like a mirror in the city's heart. It is a landscape that feels untamed, where the forest of Tijuca—the world's largest urban rainforest—reclaims the edges of the concrete.
Rio is a feeling—the "saudade" of a bossa nova song, the roar of the Maracanã stadium, the cold slap of a caipirinha on a hot day. It is a city that lives on the beach, the democratic stage where rich and poor meet to applaud the sunset. Despite its challenges, Rio vibrates with a joy for life that is palpable, a rhythm that moves universally from the hips and the heart.
Rio was Brazil's capital for nearly two centuries, from 1763 when the Portuguese crown transferred it from Salvador until 1960 when Brasília was inaugurated on the empty central plateau. During that span it also served briefly as the seat of a European empire in exile: fleeing Napoleon's 1807 invasion of Portugal, the Braganza royal court crossed the Atlantic with 15,000 courtiers and settled in Rio, making it the only city in the Americas ever to have hosted a reigning European monarchy. Prince Regent João VI opened the ports to foreign trade, founded the Botanical Garden in 1808 by planting the imperial palms whose descendants still line its avenues, and issued the first Brazilian banknotes—a fifteen-year interlude that reshaped the city and paved the way for independence in 1822 under his son Pedro I.