58 Fun Facts About Rio De Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is the second-largest city in Brazil after which city?

São Paulo only overtook Rio in the middle of the twentieth century; it now has over 11 million residents to Rio's roughly 6 million, though Rio's metro area holds about 13 million.

Which Italian navigator reputedly sailed with the fleet that named Rio in January 1502?

Amerigo Vespucci is said to have been aboard as an observer when the fleet reached the bay on New Year's Day; the old tale that the sailors took it for a river's mouth is disputed.

Which European power planted a colony on an island in Guanabara Bay in 1555, before the Portuguese expelled it?

France sent the naval officer Villegagnon, who built Fort Coligny on an island in the bay; Protestants encouraged by Calvin joined him in 1557, but he quarrelled with them over doctrine, and the Portuguese took the fort in 1560.

Rio de Janeiro was founded on 1 March 1565 by a Portuguese force led by whom?

Estácio de Sá, nephew of Governor General Mem de Sá, founded the city on 1 March 1565 as a base against foreign invaders and their Tamoio allies; he died of an arrow wound in 1567.

Rio de Janeiro's full founding name honours which saint, also the city's patron?

Saint Sebastian is the city's patron: the 1565 settlement was named São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro for the namesake saint of King Sebastião, and the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown carries the same dedication.

In 1808 the Portuguese royal court moved to Rio, fleeing whose invasion of Portugal?

Napoleon's army under General Junot, backed by Spanish troops, reached the Portuguese capital in late 1807 just after the royal fleet had sailed; in Rio, residents were turned out of their homes to house the hundreds of nobles who arrived.

Which city took over from Rio as the capital of Brazil in 1960?

Brasília was built in 41 months and inaugurated on 21 April 1960; Rio's old Federal District then became a state of its own, Guanabara, until it was merged into Rio de Janeiro state in 1975.

Which Brazilian president, elected in 1955, kept his promise to build a new inland capital?

Juscelino Kubitschek campaigned on the slogan '50 years in 5' and made the new capital its centrepiece; the city went up on the empty central plateau in 41 months, in time for him to open it before leaving office in 1961.

Which city across Guanabara Bay from Rio was capital of Rio de Janeiro state until 1975?

Niterói ran the surrounding state because the city of Rio was governed separately, first as the national capital's federal district and then as Guanabara state; when the two merged in 1975, Rio took the title.

What are natives of the city of Rio de Janeiro called?

Cariocas is the name for people from the city, a Tupi-derived word; residents of the surrounding state are officially fluminenses instead, and the Carioca River long supplied most of the city's drinking water.

Which famous Rio beach lies directly west of Ipanema, across the Jardim de Alah canal?

Leblon begins where Ipanema ends, at the canal that links the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon to the sea; in the 1880s a flower farm there hid runaway slaves, and its camellias became the emblem of the abolitionists.

The statue of Christ the Redeemer stands on the summit of which mountain?

Corcovado, a 700-metre peak inside Tijuca National Park, carries the statue; the cog railway to the top was opened by Emperor Pedro II in 1884, nearly half a century before there was a statue to visit.

Christ the Redeemer was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007 alongside which other South American site?

Machu Picchu and the Rio statue were South America's two winners in the 2007 poll; Brazilians were urged to vote by phone and online, and some ten million were reported to have done so.

Christ the Redeemer's outer layer is made of which stone?

The core is reinforced concrete; the soapstone was chosen for durability and ease of use, and periodic repairs replace pieces damaged by wind and lightning.

Christ the Redeemer, completed in 1931, is the world's largest sculpture in which design style?

Art Deco was in fashion when the statue was built in the 1920s; its engineer chose reinforced concrete as strong enough to carry the outstretched arms of a figure 30 metres tall, on an 8-metre pedestal.

At Christ the Redeemer's 1931 opening, which inventor was meant to switch on the floodlights from another continent?

Guglielmo Marconi was to trigger the floodlights by radio from Rome, 9,200 km away; accounts differ on whether it worked, and one says bad weather forced staff to switch the lights on at the site.

The original 1920s design for Rio's Christ the Redeemer would have shown Jesus holding what?

Early designs had Christ holding a globe and a cross, but the open-armed pose was chosen as a symbol of peace; Brazilian Catholics funded much of the work.

Which Rio museum, housed in a former imperial palace, was gutted by fire in September 2018?

The National Museum, once home to Brazil's royal and imperial family, burned on 2 September 2018, three months after marking its 200th anniversary; most of its 20 million items are believed to have been destroyed.

Which sprinter won the men's 100 and 200 metres at Rio 2016?

Usain Bolt had also won both races in 2008 and 2012, making it three sprint doubles in a row; he ran not at the Maracanã, which hosted the ceremonies, but across town at the Olympic Stadium.

Which footballer scored his 1,000th career goal at the Maracanã in November 1969?

Pelé reached the mark, known in Brazil as 'O Milésimo', by converting a penalty for Santos against Vasco da Gama on 19 November 1969, in his 909th first-class match.

Passengers reaching Sugarloaf's summit change cable cars on which intermediate hill?

Morro da Urca, a 220-metre hill, is where the first car ends; when the line opened in October 1912 it went no further, and passengers waited until January 1913 for the second leg to the top.

To which country did Brazil lose the deciding 1950 World Cup match before a record Maracanã crowd?

Uruguay beat Brazil 2–1 on 16 July 1950 before a crowd of around 200,000; Brazil had needed only a draw, and the defeat is remembered as the Maracanaço.

The Maracanã is officially named after Mário Filho, who campaigned for it as what?

A sports journalist, Mário Filho pushed for the stadium in his columns, and his paper Mundo Sportivo staged Rio's first samba school parade contest in 1932; he was the brother of playwright Nelson Rodrigues.

The word 'Maracanã' comes from a Tupi term for what kind of animal?

Maracanã is Tupi for a parrot, a name for small macaws and parakeets once common in the area; the Maracanã River, named for the birds, rises in the forested Tijuca hills and runs through the North Zone on its way to Guanabara Bay.

The 2014 World Cup final at the Maracanã saw Germany beat which team 1–0?

Germany beat Argentina 1–0 after extra time, Mario Götze scoring in the 113th minute; the Maracanã hosted seven matches that tournament and the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies two years later.

Which US city went out first in the 2009 vote that gave Rio the 2016 Olympics?

Chicago went out first with 18 votes, even though President Obama flew to Copenhagen to back the bid in person; Rio then beat Madrid 66 to 32 to become South America's first Olympic host.

Rio's first-ever Olympic bid, for the 1936 Games, lost out to which city?

Berlin beat Barcelona in the 1931 vote after Rio and eleven other hopefuls had dropped out; Rio's bids for the 2004 and 2012 Games also fell short before the city finally won the right to host.

Which circuit hosted the Formula One Brazilian Grand Prix in 1978 and from 1981 to 1989?

Jacarepaguá, renamed in 1988 for Rio-born champion Nelson Piquet, lost the race to Interlagos in 1990 and was demolished in 2012 to make way for venues for the 2016 Olympics.

Which sport is said to have been invented on Copacabana Beach in 1965?

Footvolley's origin story has a group of friends, barred from their seaside kickabouts, moving onto Copacabana's volleyball courts and playing over the net without using their hands.

What is a Scottish mill worker said to have had his wife bring to Rio for an 1894 match?

A ball, the story goes, came in Elizabeth Donohoe's luggage when she joined her husband Thomas, a dyer at the Bangu textile mill; his workmates' kickabout came months before Charles Miller's better-known 1895 match in another city.

The 1960s standard 'The Girl from Ipanema' was composed by Antônio Carlos Jobim and which lyricist?

Vinicius de Moraes, a poet and career diplomat, wrote the Portuguese lyrics in 1962 after he and Jobim watched 17-year-old Helô Pinheiro walk by on her way to the beach; Stan Getz's recording made it a worldwide hit.

Which music genre, whose signature song is 'The Girl from Ipanema', was born in Rio?

Bossa nova grew out of samba and cool jazz in Rio's beach neighbourhoods in the late 1950s, shaped by João Gilberto's guitar and Jobim's songs; the 1964 album Getz/Gilberto carried it around the world.

In the Tupi language, the name Ipanema is usually translated as meaning what?

Bad water is the best-known reading, though 'stinking lake' is also proposed; the name first belonged to a river in another state, birthplace of the Baron of Ipanema, who developed the beachfront in the late 19th century.

Copacabana is named for a chapel's replica of Our Lady of Copacabana, a Lake Titicaca shrine and patron of which country?

Bolivia's patron Virgin gave her name to a small chapel on the headland; the district, until then known by the Tupi name Sacopenapã, took the name too, and the chapel's site is now part of Fort Copacabana.

Which landscape architect designed the wave pattern of the Copacabana promenade?

Roberto Burle Marx redesigned the four-kilometre Portuguese-pavement mosaic in 1970, turning the waves to run parallel to the sea; the original 1930s mosaic copied a traditional Portuguese pavement design.

Roughly how many people crowd onto Copacabana Beach for Rio's New Year's Eve fireworks?

2 million is the usual estimate for the crowd that fills the four-kilometre beach at midnight; after a serious accident on the sand, the fireworks were moved offshore and have been launched from boats since 2001.

What colour do most revellers wear on Copacabana Beach on New Year's Eve?

White is worn for good luck, a custom taken from the Afro-Brazilian worshippers who gather on the beach with offerings for the sea goddess Iemanjá; revellers still throw flowers into the waves.

Which architect designed the Sambadrome, the parade avenue where samba schools compete each Carnival?

Oscar Niemeyer designed the Sambadrome for Governor Leonel Brizola, and it went up in about four months in time for the 1984 Carnival; a primary school with more than a hundred classrooms was built in beneath its stands.

Rio Carnival is held every year immediately before which Christian season?

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, so Carnival is the last indulgence before the fast, five days of parades and street parties; Rio's is billed as the world's biggest, with some two million people a day in the streets.

To open Rio Carnival, the mayor symbolically hands the keys of the city to which Carnival figure?

King Momo, named after the Greek god of mockery, 'rules' the city in the mayor's place for the days of Carnival; Rio has had a King Momo since 1933, traditionally a tall, fat man.

Which band headlined the opening night of the first Rock in Rio festival in January 1985?

Queen topped the bill on the opening night and again a week later, and both shows were filmed and broadcast across Brazil; adman Roberto Medina's ten-day festival drew about 1.4 million people in all.

The tiled Escadaria Selarón in Lapa was created by an artist born in which country?

Chile was the birthplace of painter Jorge Selarón, who began tiling the steps outside his Lapa home in 1990 and sold his paintings to pay for more tiles; in 2013 he was found dead on the staircase itself.

The Escadaria Selarón climbs from Lapa to which neighbourhood?

Santa Teresa, the hilltop district the 215 steps lead up to, grew up around an 18th-century convent; Selarón kept reworking the tiles, calling the staircase a dream that would end only on the day of his death.

Rio's Tijuca forest was replanted in the 19th century because clearing it for which crop had hurt the water supply?

Coffee farms had stripped the hills and dried up the city's springs, so in the 1860s Emperor Pedro II ordered them replanted; Major Archer started with six enslaved workers, and some 100,000 trees were eventually planted.

What were the crowded tenements called whose demolition in Rio's early-1900s reforms drove the poor onto the hillsides?

Cortiços, literally 'beehives', were razed as Mayor Pereira Passos drove the broad Avenida Central through the old centre; many of those evicted moved onto the nearby hills, swelling the favelas there.

The 1904 Vaccine Revolt broke out against the compulsory public-health campaign of which physician?

Oswaldo Cruz, the public-health chief, had already sent squads into homes to wipe out mosquitoes; a week of rioting got compulsory smallpox vaccination suspended, and a 1908 epidemic then killed almost 6,400 people.

Which 19th-century Rio-born novelist wrote Dom Casmurro and became first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters?

Machado de Assis, the grandson of freed slaves, was born poor on Rio's Livramento hill and went to work as a printer's apprentice at 17; he rose to be counted the great master of Brazilian literature.

Rio's Theatro Municipal, opened in 1909, was modelled on which famous European building?

The Palais Garnier in Paris inspired the design, part of Mayor Pereira Passos's drive to give Rio Parisian boulevards; he had studied there during Haussmann's rebuilding, and his own son co-designed the theatre.

Which James Bond film is partly set in Rio, including a fight on the Sugarloaf cable car?

Moonraker (1979) sends Bond to Rio at Carnival time, where the steel-toothed Jaws attacks him on the Sugarloaf cable car; Jaws crashes into the station and is pulled from the wreckage by Dolly, his future girlfriend.

Rio's Metropolitan Cathedral, inaugurated in 1979, has what unusual shape?

A cone 75 metres high and 106 metres across, the cathedral was designed by Edgar Fonseca, by some accounts with Mayan pyramids in mind; it can hold 20,000 standing worshippers beneath four soaring stained-glass windows.

Which state-controlled company, among Brazil's largest corporations, has its headquarters in Rio?

Petrobras was created in 1953 after the 'The oil is ours' campaign and given a monopoly on Brazilian oil; the monopoly has gone, but the state still holds a controlling stake and the company is still run from Rio.

In 1992 Rio hosted which landmark United Nations conference?

The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit, produced Agenda 21 and the climate convention; Rio+20 followed in 2012.

From which Portuguese city was the royal library that became Rio's National Library shipped in 1810 and 1811?

Lisbon lost its Royal Library to the earthquake and fire of 1755; the replacement assembled at Ajuda Palace, some 60,000 items, was shipped out in three stages once the royal court had settled in Rio.

Which World Heritage site in Rio was the landing place for hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans?

Valongo Wharf received an estimated 900,000 enslaved Africans from 1811; rebuilt in 1843 to welcome a future empress and later buried, it resurfaced during port works in 2011 and joined the World Heritage list in 2017.

Which 2002 crime film, with four Academy Award nominations, is named after a Rio neighbourhood built to rehouse favela residents?

City of God is the English name of Cidade de Deus, laid out in the 1960s to resettle people cleared from inner-city favelas; most of the film's actors were themselves residents of Rio's favelas.

Which Rio football club, founded as a rowing club in 1895, plays in red and black stripes?

Flamengo, named after its home neighbourhood, started on the water and did not play an official football match until 1912; its youth ranks later produced Zico and Vinícius Júnior.

Which favela was Rio's most populous at the 2022 census?

Rocinha counted about 72,000 residents in the 2022 census; officially it is a neighbourhood of its own, though many still call the steep hillside settlement between São Conrado and Gávea a favela.

Which architect designed Rio's Museum of Tomorrow, the waterfront science museum that opened in 2015?

Santiago Calatrava built it on the Mauá pier as a centrepiece of the port's renewal ahead of the 2016 Olympics; solar panels sit on wing-like roof sections that move to follow the sun.