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The citizens of the ten-million-strong city of Rio de Janeiro call it the Cidade Marvilhosa - and there can't be much argument about that. Rio sits on the southern shore of a landlocked harbour within the magnificent natural setting of Guanabara Bay. Extending for twenty kilometres along an alluvial strip, between an azure sea and jungle-clad mountains, the city's streets and buildings have been moulded around the foothills of the mountain range which provides its backdrop, while out in the bay there are innumerable rocky islands fringed with white sand. The panoramic view over Rio is breathtaking, and even the concrete skyscrapers which dominate the city's skyline add to the attraction.

Although riven by inequality, Rio de Janeiro has great style. Its international renown is bolstered by a series of symbols that rank as some of the greatest landmarks in the world, the Corcovado ("hunchback") mountain supporting the great statue of Christ the Redeemer; the rounded incline of the Sugar Loaf mountain, standing at the entrance to the bay; and the famous sweep of Copacabana beach , probably the most notable length of sand on the planet. It's a setting enhanced by the annual, frenetic sensuality of Carnaval , an explosive celebration which - for many people - sums up Rio and her citizens, the cariocas . The major downside in a city given over to conspicuous consumption is the rapacious development which is engulfing Rio de Janeiro. As the rural poor, escaping drought and poverty in other regions of Brazil, flock to swell Rio's population, the city is being squeezed like a toothpaste tube between mountains and sea, pushing its human contents out along the coast in either direction. The city's rich architectural heritage is being whittled away and, if the present form of economic development is sustained, the natural environment will eventually be destroyed, too. It's a process unwittingly hastened by Rio's citizens who look forward optimistically to the future, most with the hope of relief from poverty, some with an eye to the main chance and greater wealth.

The state of Rio de Janeiro , surrounding the city, is a fairly recent phenomenon, established in 1975 as a result of the amalgamation of Guanabara State and Rio city. Fairly small by Brazilian standards, the state is both beautiful and accessible, with easy trips either east along the Costa do Sol or west along the Costa Verde , taking in unspoilt beaches, washed by a relatively unpolluted ocean. Inland routes make a welcome change from the sands, especially the trip to Petropolis , the nineteenth-century mountain retreat of Rio's rich.

The best time to visit both city and state, as least as far as the climate goes, is between May and August, when the region is cooled by trade winds and the temperature remains at around 22-32°C. Between December and March, the rainy season, it's more humid, the temperature more like 40°C; but even then it's never as oppressive as it is in the North of Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro state

It's easy to get out of Rio city, something you'll probably want to do at some stage during your stay. There are good bus services to all the places mentioned below, while the easiest trips are by ferry just over the bay to the Ilha de Paqueta - a car-free zone popular with locals - or to Niteroi , whose Museu de Arte Contemporanea has become an essential sight for visitors to Rio. After that, the choice is a simple one: either head east along the Costa do Sol to Cabo Frio and Buzios, or west along the Costa Verde to Ilha Grande and Parati; both coasts offer endless good beaches and little holiday towns, developed to varying degrees. Or strike off inland to Petropolis and Teresopolis, where the mountainous interior provides a welcome, cool relief from the frenetic goings-on back in Rio.

If you planning on renting a car , this is as good a state as any to brave the traffic: the coasts are an easy drive from the city and stopping off at more remote beaches is easy, while your own wheels would let you get to grips with the extraordinary scenery up in the mountains.

Travel Details

Buses

International departures daily to Asuncion (30hr), Buenos Aires (50hr), Montevideo (37hr) and Santiago (70hr).

Rio to: Angra dos Reis (hourly; 2hr 30min); Belem (1 daily; 52hr); Belo Horizonte (20 daily; 6hr); Brasilia (8 daily; 18hr); Buzios (5 daily; 4hr); Cabo Frio (5 daily; 2hr 30min); Campo Grande (1 daily; 21hr); Fortaleza (1 daily; 43hr); Foz do Iguacu (6 daily; 22hr); Ouro Preto (1 daily; 8hr); Parati (5 daily; 4hr 30min); Petropolis (every 30min; 90min); Recife (4 daily; 38hr); Salvador (6 daily; 27hr); Sao Luis (1 daily; 50hr); Sao Paulo (every 15min; 6hr); Teresopolis (every 30min; 2hr); Vitoria (9 daily; 8hr).

Planes

Frequent domestic flights from Sector A of Galeao airport on Ilha do Governador to all state capitals and other internal destinations.

Rio-Sao Paulo shuttle from Santos Dumont, downtown, every 30min from 6.30am to 10.30pm (55min). The airport also has less frequent services to Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and Curitiba.

Explore Rio

Nearly five hundred years have seen RIO DE JANEIRO transformed from a fortified outpost on the rim of an unknown continent into one of the world's great cities. Its recorded past is tied exclusively to the legacy of the colonialism on which it was founded. No lasting vestige survives of the civilization of the Tamoios people, who inhabited the land before the Portuguese arrived, and the city's history effectively begins on January 1, 1502, when a Portuguese captain, Andre Goncalves, steered his craft into Guanabara Bay, thinking he was heading into the mouth of a great river. The city takes its name from this event - Rio de Janeiro means the "River of January". In 1555, the French, keen to stake a claim on the New World, established a garrison near the Sugar Loaf mountain, and the Governor General of Brazil, Mem de Sa, made an unsuccessful attempt to oust them. It was left to his son, Estacio de Sa, finally to defeat them in 1567, though he fell - mortally wounded - during the battle. The city then acquired its official name, Sao Sebastiao de Rio de Janeiro, after the infant king of Portugal, and Rio began to develop on and around the Morro do Castelo - in front of where Santos Dumont airport now stands.

With Bahia the centre of the new Portuguese colony, initial progress in Rio was slow, and only in the 1690s, when gold was discovered in the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais, did the city's fortunes look up, as it became the control and taxation centre for the gold trade. During the seventeenth century the sugar cane economy brought new wealth to Rio, but despite being a prosperous entrepot, the city remained poorly developed. For the most part it comprised a collection of narrow streets and alleys, cramped and dirty, bordered by habitations built from lath and mud. However, Rio's strategic importance grew as a result of the struggle with the Spanish over territories to the south (which would become Uruguay), and in 1763 the city replaced Bahia (Salvador) as Brazil's capital city. By the eighteenth century, the majority of Rio's inhabitants were African slaves. Unlike other foreign colonies, in Brazil miscegenation became the rule rather than the exception: even the Catholic Church tolerated procreation between the races, on the grounds that it supplied more souls to be saved. As a result, virtually nothing in Rio remained untouched by African customs, beliefs and behaviour - a state of affairs that clearly influences today's city, too, with its mixture of Afro-Brazilian music, spiritualist cults and cuisine.

In March 1808, having fled before the advance of Napoleon Bonaparte's forces during the Peninsular War, Dom Joao VI of Portugal arrived in Rio, bringing with him some 1500 nobles of the Portuguese royal court. So enamoured of Brazil was he that after Napoleon's defeat in 1815 he declined to return to Portugal and instead proclaimed "The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, of this side and the far side of the sea, and the Guinea Coast of Africa" - the greatest colonial empire of the age, with Rio de Janeiro as its capital. During Dom Joao's reign the Enlightenment came to Rio, the city's streets were paved and lit, and Rio acquired a new prosperity based on coffee .

Royal patronage allowed the arts and sciences to flourish, and Rio was visited by many of the illustrious European names of the day. In their literary and artistic work they left a vivid account of contemporary Rio society - colonial, patriarchal and slave-based. Yet while conveying images of Rio's street life, fashions and natural beauty, they don't give any hint of the heat, stench and squalor of life in a tropical city of over 100,000 inhabitants, without a sewerage system. Behind the imperial gloss, Rio was still mostly a slum of dark, airless habitations, intermittently scourged by outbreaks of yellow fever, its economy completely reliant upon human slavery .

However, by the late nineteenth century, Rio had lost much of its mercantilist colonial flavour and started to develop as a modern city: trams and trains replaced sedans, the first sewerage system was inaugurated in 1864, a telegraph link was established between Rio and London, and a tunnel was excavated which opened the way to Copacabana, as people left the crowded centre and looked for new living space. Under the administration of the engineer Francisco Pereira Passos , Rio went through a period of urban reconstruction that all but destroyed the last vestiges of its colonial design. The city was torn apart by a period of frenzied building between 1900 and 1910, its monumental splendour modelled on the Paris of the Second Empire. Public buildings, grand avenues, libraries and parks were all built to embellish the city, lending it the dignity perceived as characteristic of the great capital cities of the Old World.

During the 1930s Rio enjoyed international renown, buttressed by Hollywood images and the patronage of the first-generation jet set. Rio became the nation's commercial centre, too, and a new wave of modernization swept the city, leaving little more than the Catholic churches as monuments to the past. Even the removal of the country's political administration to the new federal capital of Brasilia in 1960 did nothing to discourage the developers. Today, with the centre rebuilt many times since colonial days, most interest lies not in Rio's buildings and monuments but firmly in the beaches to the south of the city. For more than sixty years these have been Rio's heart and soul, providing a constant source of recreation and income for cariocas. In stark contrast, Rio's favelas , clinging precariously to the hillsides, show another side to the city, saying much about the divisions within it. Although not exclusive to the capital, these slums seem all the more harsh in Rio because of the plenty and beauty that surround them.