Two Faces of the Marvelous City

Famous by its spectacular natural environment, its carnival, football and long sand beaches, Rio de Janeiro leaves nobody indifferent. It charms with its relaxed way of life, seduces with its beautiful women, excites with its passionate music but also shocks with its social contrasts…

Text & photo by Svetlana Dingarac

To describe Rio de Janeiro in a few sentences is not easy because its charms are so many. Some say the lavish and sultry scenery give Rio its beguiling magic, others stress it is cultural energy and countless attractions, while everyone seems to agree that the city’s residents somehow radiate joy. Whatever your reason for loving Rio, this city’s reputation as one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the world is justified. That the city presents its inhabitants as its most important selling point proves the amiability of the Cariocas, as residents of Rio are known. True aficionados of life, they are deserving of fanciful and flamboyant festivities, like Carnival and the Copacabana New Year’s celebrations.

"If God is an artist, then Rio is his masterpiece!" is the first thought when one sees the view of the city from the Corcovado Mountain in the shade of the spread arms of the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer.

Located along the seacoast of a magnificent bay and flanked by sand beaches on one side and strangely shaped mountains on the other, covered with a thick tropical forest with numerous waterfalls, exotic birds and animals, Rio’s beauty leaves one breathless and justifies its name as the Cidade Maravilhosa, the Marvelous City. A fascinating blend of urban and nature is evident at every step. Though the city is one of the world’s biggest metropolises, up to 18 percent of Rio is covered with vegetation thanks to the Tijuca National Park, known as the world’s largest urban rain forest.

However, Rio’s most famous symbol is manmade. The sculpture of Jesus Christ, recently named one of the New Seven World Wonders, was erected in 1931 after about ten years of construction work. Owing to its imposing size and its outstanding location at 700 metres above sea level, it is visible from all parts of the city.

The second important city icon is the Sugar Loaf Mountain with its characteristic shape, which rises almost vertically from the Guanabara Bay. Its top can be reached only by a cable car. "Red" beach, marina and the picturesque Urca district located at the foot of the Sugar Loaf make one feel as if this is a peaceful sea resort though it is actually only several hundred metres from the city’s hustle and bustle. Of the other tourist attractions, one should mention the Botanical Garden, one of the richest in the world, the historical downtown with the church Nossa Senhora de Candelária, the monastery of Sao Bento, the famed café house Colombo, the theatre and museums.

To write about Rio and not to mention one of its famed beaches is impossible. Beaches are the arteries of the city and its social life in great part takes place just there. Rio can boast of more than 80 kilometres of beaches and each of them has some peculiarity. The most famous is certainly Copacabana, which until 1892, when the tunnel Velhio was opened, had been totally cut off from the city. When the Neoclassical Copacabana Palace Hotel was opened in 1923, Rio became a new attraction for Hollywood’s celebrities and the beach Copacabana turned into an elite destination. Today it is one of the most famous world beaches, but the roles of trendy beaches are now taken by Ipanema and Leblon. Ipanema has become known by the popular song "The Girl from Ipanema" composed by Antonio Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes in 1960. Ipanema has also turned into a fashion centre of South America as the most celebrated Brazilian fashion designers have boutiques here. Ipanema offers a sight of the most beautiful people of all colours and races, a characteristic of Rio.

Everlasting summer and the fascinating scenery of Rio were probably crucial for the Cariocas to develop their specific cult of body and healthy life. Hence Rio is the city of passionate lovers of sport. The choices are countless – from simple promenades by the sea, surfing, beach volleyball, bicycling, and fitness exercises to extreme sports like para gliding and rock climbing. Naturally, the most numerous group are fans of the most important minor thing in the world, football. Whether played on the beach, in streets or playgrounds, football remains the top love in the hearts of every Brazilian and actually makes a part of their culture. Rio has four major football clubs of which Flamingo has up to 35 million aficionados. The Maracană Stadium, one of the inevitable sport landmarks of the city, was built in 1950 for the World Cup final. Its original capacity of 200,000 seats brought it the title of the largest stadium in the world. Today, it has only 88,000 seats because all standing places were replaced with seats due to security reasons.

The nightlife scene in Rio is extremely vibrant and offers something for everybody’s taste and pocket. The majority of bars and clubs that offer a rich variety of music can be found in the Lapa Quarter. The bossa nova, samba, funk Carioca and the so-called MPB (popular Brazilian music) are only some of the music choices one can hear.

However, Rio is far from being an ideal place for life. The real picture of the city is incomplete if we ignore its other side, which is not at all attractive. It is estimated that of the total population of 11 million inhabitants in Rio, the broader area of up to two million live in the unhygienic parts called favelas. These shantytowns built without urban plans or sanitary facilities, with precarious houses made of all sorts of materials sprout on the hill slopes, on public land, where it is impossible to build solid objects. More than 70 percent of the inhabitants of the favelas, popularly called the Faveladors, arrive from the rural parts of Brazil. These destitute people do everything in order to enable their numerous families to survive… What’s even worse, in the favelas violence is extremely high, drug traffic thrives and inter-gangs battles are frequent, turning from time to time into veritable small wars with high causalities. The police rarely enter these slums in which drug lords have absolute power and where only the rules of street govern. It is estimated that there are more than 600 favelas in Rio, of which the biggest and the most infamous is the Rocinha. According to official data, some 60,000 people live in this favela but the real number is probably twice as much. One of the bizarre characteristics of favelas in Rio is that they most often sprout adjacent to wealthy areas. This is quite evident in the case of Rocinha, which is located on the hill slope just opposite to the exclusive Leblon, or on the Copacabana where just two blocks away from deluxe hotels begins the favela Pavao. No wonder that wealthy Cariocas live in obsessive fear of their less lucky co-citizens, which is evident in the numerous security cameras mounted at the entrance to every public and apartment building, restaurant or shopping mall. Armed guards, video-cameras, alarm systems, windows with grids, high walls and barbed wire are only some of these security measures. There are many expensive armoured cars in the streets, showing that the rich don’t spare when they want to feel fully protected at every moment and at every place.

Until recently, no person who was not a resident of a favela, tourists included, could enter it without endangering his own life. However, aware that there is a great interest among foreigners for visiting the favelas and that this interest can become a source of money, some local bosses have made agreements with travel agencies so that they now offer visits and even accommodation in favelas as the newest attraction.

Finally, as nothing in this world is perfect, it is unreal to expect that the fascinating landscape of Rio and all the magnificent offers the city has are without a single flaw. If we accept that everything has its Ying and Yang, and that balance rules the universe, we should accept that this other dimension of Rio, as one of its numerous aspects, doesn’t at all ruin its image but actually contributes to complete its character.