Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro may have the most spectacular natural setting of any major city on Earth. The Tijuca National Park — the world's largest urban forest — grows straight down to the city's beaches, creating a backdrop of Atlantic rainforest behind 4 km of Copacabana's mosaic-tiled promenade and Ipanema's white sand. Christ the Redeemer stands with arms outstretched 710 metres above it all, on Corcovado Mountain, the most recognisable religious statue in the world — a New Seven Wonder that you can reach by rack railway through the forest.

Carnival, held every year in the days before Lent (February or early March), transforms Rio into the world's largest party — over 2 million people take to the streets daily, and the Sambadrome parade sees some 70 samba schools, each with 2,000–5,000 performers, competing in an extraordinary 90-minute choreographed spectacle of costumes, floats, and drumming. Blocos, the unofficial street carnival parties, number over 500 in 2024 — free, spontaneous, and happening in every neighbourhood. Arriving a week before Carnival starts gives you the city before the peak chaos.

Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) rises 396 metres directly from Guanabara Bay and is accessed by two sequential cable car rides — the first to Morro da Urca (230 m), the second to the summit. The panorama from the top takes in the bay, the beaches, Christ the Redeemer on the opposite mountain, the city spread behind both, and (on clear days) the Serra do Mar mountains stretching to the horizon. The best time to go is an hour before sunset — the view from the first cable car platform, with the city glittering below and the light changing over the bay, is extraordinary.

The neighbourhood of Santa Teresa — a hilltop bohemian enclave connected to downtown by an ancient yellow tram (bonde) — is Rio's arts quarter. Cobblestone streets lined with 19th-century mansions converted into restaurants, art studios, and boutique hotels; the Chácara do Céu museum (Matisse, Monet, Dalí); and Friday evening at the Bar do Mineiro with cold chopinho beer and pastéis (fried pastry) watching the neighbourhood come alive. This is Rio at its most liveable — a counterpoint to the beach intensity below.