🇧🇷 Brazil
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro is the most visually spectacular city in the world — the combination of towering granite mountains, Atlantic rainforest, the world's most famous beach (Copacabana), the enormous harbour (Guanabara Bay), Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado mountain, and the Sugarloaf cable car, all compressed into a single city of 7 million people between the mountains and the sea. Brazil's capital until 1960 (when Brasília was built), Rio remains the cultural capital: the birthplace of bossa nova, samba, capoeira, Carnival (the world's largest street party), and the churrascaria dining format. The contrast between the beach culture of Ipanema and Copacabana, the colonial grandeur of Santa Teresa, and the favela communities on the hillsides makes Rio one of the most complex and unforgettable cities on earth.