Belisco Botafogo
GO ’26 ◎A women-owned wine bar; Gabriela Teixeira, a tasteful, opinionated Sommelière, runs the bottles and chef Monique Gabietti the kitchen. Small plates, good bottles, and Botafogo behaving like it knows something.
A Small Guide to Rio de Janeiro
Rio · Visited and curated by André
Please find my list of recommendations for a beautiful time in Rio de Janeiro below.
Eat
A women-owned wine bar; Gabriela Teixeira, a tasteful, opinionated Sommelière, runs the bottles and chef Monique Gabietti the kitchen. Small plates, good bottles, and Botafogo behaving like it knows something.
Aprazível Santa Teresa
GO ’26 ◌Brazilian cooking on a Santa Teresa hillside with the bay laid out below; marked for the view as much as the kitchen.
Bar do Mineiro Santa Teresa
GO ’26 ◌A Santa Teresa botequim papered in old photographs; feijoada on Saturdays, cachaça whenever. Marked, not yet judged.
Confeitaria Colombo Centro
GO ’26 ◎An 1894 café of Belgian mirrors and stained glass; order a coffee and a pastry, and let the room do the rest.
Look
Real Gabinete Português de Leitura Centro
GO ’26 ◌A neo-Manueline reading room where the books climb three storeys into the light; marked, and waiting for the right quiet hour.
MAM Rio Flamengo
GO ’26 ◌Reidy’s concrete modernism set in a Burle Marx garden by the bay; marked for the building as much as what hangs in it.
Casa Roberto Marinho Cosme Velho
GO ’26A collector’s hillside house in Cosme Velho; Brazilian modernism hung where someone actually lived with it.
Sítio Roberto Burle Marx Barra de Guaratiba
GO ’26 ◌The landscape architect’s own estate out west, thousands of species arranged by the man who taught Brazil to see its plants; marked for a long day out.
Architecture
Theatro Municipal Centro
GO ’26 ◌Rio’s Belle Époque opera house, marble and gilt off Cinelândia; marked for a night when something worth the room is on.
Museum of Tomorrow Praça Mauá
GO ’26Calatrava’s white skeleton reaching out over the revived port; a science museum about where we’re headed, more convincing as a building than a prophecy.
Walk
Parque Lage Jardim Botânico
GO ’26 ◎A palatial courtyard at the foot of Corcovado, forest pressing in at the edges; coffee under the arches while the mountain watches.
Floresta da Tijuca Tijuca
GO ’26The world’s largest urban forest, replanted by hand in the 1860s; trails, waterfalls, and the city’s lungs a few minutes above the noise.
Copacabana Beach Copacabana
GO ’26 ◎Four kilometres of wave-pattern pavement and open Atlantic; the city’s living room, busy from the dawn swimmers to the last beer.
Sleep
Copacabana Palace Copacabana
GO ’26 ◎The 1923 grande dame on the beachfront; you don’t have to stay the night to feel why the city measures glamour against it.