Attraction
1. Christ the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor)
The Art Deco statue of Christ on the summit of Corcovado, dedicated in 1931 and reached by a rack railway that has run since 1884.
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2. MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo
São Paulo's best-known art museum, raised above Avenida Paulista on Lina Bo Bardi's suspended concrete structure and holding more than 8,000 works from Raphael to Portinari.
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3. Parque Ibirapuera
São Paulo's best-loved park, opened in 1954 for the city's 400th anniversary, with 158 hectares of lawns and lakes and a complex of buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer.
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4. Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar)
The 396-metre granite peak at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, reached by Brazil's first cable car, which opened in 1912 and stops at Morro da Urca.
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5. Escadaria Selarón
A 215-step staircase between Lapa and Santa Teresa covered in more than 2,000 tiles by the Chilean artist Jorge Selarón between 1990 and 2013.
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6. Pinacoteca de São Paulo
The city's oldest art museum, founded in 1905 in an exposed-brick building beside the Jardim da Luz, with more than 12,000 works centred on Brazilian art.
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7. Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow)
Santiago Calatrava's science museum on Pier Mauá, opened in 2015, with a multimedia exhibition on the cosmos, the Earth and humanity's future.
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8. Theatro Municipal de São Paulo
An opera house from 1911 modelled on the Palais Garnier, home to the city's symphony orchestra and ballet and the venue of the 1922 Modern Art Week.
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9. Catedral da Sé
São Paulo's neo-Gothic cathedral on Praça da Sé, built between 1913 and 1967, with 92-metre spires, a Florentine-style dome and a crypt of the city's bishops.
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10. Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (Jardim Botânico)
Founded by the future King João VI in 1808, Rio's botanical garden holds about 6,500 species and a famous avenue of 134 royal palms.
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11. Maracanã Stadium
Brazil's most famous football stadium, opened for the 1950 World Cup, host of the 2014 final and home ground of Flamengo and Fluminense.
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12. Museu do Futebol
An interactive museum built into the stands of the Pacaembu stadium, tracing how football became part of Brazilian life across 15 rooms and 6,900 square metres.
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13. Museu do Ipiranga
The University of São Paulo's history museum in an 1890s palace near the spot where independence was proclaimed, reopened and enlarged in 2022 after nine years of work.
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14. Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro
Rio's opera house on Cinelândia, opened in 1909 and inspired by the Paris Opéra, with interiors painted by Eliseu Visconti and Rodolfo Amoedo.
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15. Museu da Língua Portuguesa
An interactive museum about the Portuguese language inside the 1901 Estação da Luz station, rebuilt after a 2015 fire and topped with a rooftop terrace.
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16. Parque Lage
A landscaped park at the foot of Corcovado around a 1920s mansion that now houses an art school and a café beside its courtyard pool.
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17. Mosteiro de São Bento
A Benedictine monastery founded in 1598, with an early 20th-century neo-Romanesque basilica where Mass is sung in Gregorian chant and monks sell their own baking.
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18. Real Gabinete Português de Leitura
A Neo-Manueline library built between 1880 and 1887 by Rio's Portuguese community, holding about 350,000 volumes beneath an iron-framed skylight.
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19. Farol Santander
A cultural centre in the 1947 Altino Arantes skyscraper, the former Banespa headquarters, with exhibitions and an observation deck looking out up to 40 kilometres.
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20. Tijuca National Park
A national park of almost 4,000 hectares of replanted Atlantic forest in the heart of Rio, with Pico da Tijuca, waterfalls and viewpoints.
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