Rio on Foot: a final walk through the centre

Rio had already supplied the two attractions that almost everyone names first. At the beginning of the trip, Dave and I visited Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado and went up Sugarloaf Mountain. Both lived up to their top-rated status for me, and I would make time for both whenever the opportunity allows. Most of the days that followed were spent chasing mountains elsewhere in Brazil, but Rio kept appearing in smaller details too, especially on its painted walls.

One last walk before the airport

On my final morning in Brazil, Dave and I had an excellent breakfast at the hotel. He wanted to climb one more mountain; my flight was in the evening. I left two backpacks at reception, including the one with my computer and, rather inconveniently, all the stories stored on it, and went out with only what I needed for a few hours in the city.

Rio came with plenty of warnings about safety. I was not inclined to argue with them, but millions of people also live ordinary lives there every day: they go to work, eat in restaurants and exercise outside. I decided caution was sensible, but letting it cancel my curiosity completely was not.

I had first planned to call a taxi. Then I checked the distance and found that the place I wanted to reach was less than two kilometres away, so walking won. The route followed the waterfront, passing the Museum of Modern Art. It was lively there: groups of young people were practising dance moves and recording short videos, apparently with considerably more choreography than my sightseeing required.

Cinelândia, statues and office towers

From the waterfront I moved into central Rio. Cinelândia was the opposite of the empty office streets I would meet later: tourists, locals, monuments and grand public buildings all competing for the same relatively small patch of city.

Near the Academia Brasileira de Letras, two bronze figures made a quieter pair: poet Manuel Bandeira at his desk and Joaquim Nabuco standing nearby.

One of the buildings I had mentally filed as ‘theatre, or something like that’ was, in fact, the Theatro Municipal. Nearby, Palácio Pedro Ernesto faces the square as the home of Rio de Janeiro’s Municipal Chamber.

The centre kept alternating between formal monuments and painted walls. That contrast was more interesting to me than trying to turn the walk into a checklist of famous buildings.

The equestrian monument to Dom Pedro I marked Praça Tiradentes, while more murals continued along the surrounding streets.

One of my strongest impressions of central Rio was the number of homeless people in ordinary public space. I saw people barefoot, sleeping on pavements or trying to rest beside their few possessions. I do not want to hide that behind softer phrases such as ‘a quieter street scene’. Homelessness is not a personal failing, but I also find it difficult to accept a society treating this level of visible deprivation as normal.

Then the mood changed. The banks-and-offices district felt bleak and strangely empty; for stretches I was essentially walking alone.

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian was a welcome interruption. Its shape is strange for a cathedral, but strange in a positive sense. There is no requirement that every cathedral should behave like a Baroque church. The broad cone is memorable from outside, and inside the huge stained-glass panels draw the eye upwards towards the cross-shaped opening in the roof.

Lapa: an aqueduct and a lot of paint

From the cathedral I continued towards Lapa and the Arcos da Lapa, the old Carioca Aqueduct. It was built to bring water into the city centre and later became the route used by the Santa Teresa tram. My own on-the-spot assessment was less scholarly: like all aqueducts, it looked very much like an aqueduct. So I carried on.

Beyond the arches there was a large open area full of people doing various things. I wandered around without a stronger objective, which seemed to qualify me perfectly well for the occasion.

A short distance away was the Escadaria Selarón, the staircase Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón covered with tiles over many years. More than 200 steps now form the work, with tiles arriving from many parts of the world.

Reaching it was less polished than the postcards. I tried one side street and turned back because the pavement was difficult to pass and the street hygiene was poor around people sitting or sleeping there. Homelessness itself was not what stopped me; the practical state of the alley did. A second street was not much better, but eventually I reached the steps.

The staircase was genuinely interesting. Looking at the individual tiles, it felt as though almost every one ought to have its own story. My less scientific impression was that there might have been even more tourists than tiles. After a short look I escaped by a third street and continued through more painted walls.

Back to the bay

On the way back towards the waterfront I crossed several large roads and passed through a market selling more or less everything. I did not need everything, so that visit was brief. In a nearby park I then stumbled into some kind of international festival, with dozens of kiosks repeatedly offering things to taste. I tried a Brazilian meat snack and, entirely by accident, chose very well.

Seeing the same thing repeatedly made the contrast with Rio’s grand buildings and tourist sights hard to ignore. I refuse to accept that there are no workable responses. The Nordic countries are not problem-free, and housing and poverty pressures have worsened in places, but homelessness remains comparatively low in Finland and Norway. Finland in particular reduced the number of people experiencing homelessness substantially over the past decade while pursuing a Housing First approach. The comparison is imperfect, but it is enough to show that public policy can change the scale of the problem.

A bronze group on the monument to Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca appeared as I worked my way back towards Glória and the water.

The last view of Sugarloaf across the bay neatly echoed the beginning of the trip. Back at the hotel I had a coffee, collected my bags and called a taxi to the airport. From there it was Madrid, Frankfurt and finally a bus to Prague. The Brazil days were over.

Rio had given me both versions of sightseeing. Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf were the obvious headline attractions, and both were worth the time. But this shorter final walk through the centre was useful for a different reason: monuments, modern buildings, murals, crowds, empty office streets, unexpected food and the mountains all occupied the same few hours. So did a level of visible homelessness that I found difficult to accept as just another normal feature of a large city.