Rio de Janeiro: Introduction: Overview

The Portuguese arrived in 1502, the French in 1555. The Tupinambá, a native people, had been here forever, around the shores of the perfect series of coves and beaches they called Guanabara, or Bosom of the Sea. The Portuguese named it Rio de Janeiro—“The River of January”—because “rio” in ancient Portuguese meant “body of water” and because January it was. The land was marsh, swamp and sandpit; yellow fever and malaria abounded, but the location was strategic, an ideal southern outpost on the Spice Trail. And it was beautiful: “pure beauty as God intended,” in the words of an emissary to the Portuguese king in the early 1800s, when Napoleon was ravaging Europe and the Portuguese court was planning to relocate to the Bosom of the Sea.

Colonial capital, home to the Portuguese court from 1808 to 1821, capital of the Brazilian Empire and its republic until 1960—Rio de Janeiro has an aristocratic heart deeply concealed in an elegant, brave, optimistic soul. For a moment that lasted from Emperor Pedro II’s visionary rule in the mid-1800s to mid-20th-century affluence, Rio fully inhabited its destiny as a tropical metropolis, a center for what anthropologist Gilberto Freyre called “a new civilization.”

Deprived of status, and progressively of funds, when the capital was moved to Brasília, Rio nonetheless endured. Its sophisticated spirit, impeccable taste, indestructible lust for life and generous hospitality have remained largely intact.