The Happening 'Hood in Rio De Janeiro

It may not have the glitz and glamour of Copacabana or Ipanema, but Botafogo is Rio’s most up-and-coming ’hood, with a hipster scene that has as much social substance as left-field style.

- Lydia Bell 

From Corcovado Mountain with the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer at its peak, I’m looking across one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Rio de Janeiro, like other urban beauties such as Sydney and New York, elicits a sharp intake of breath when viewed from a distance.

The ‘Cidade Maravilhosa’ stretches along the southern shore of Guanabara Bay, a 20mile stretch wedged between indigo sea and rainforest-shrouded mountains, its sinuous streetscape moulded around the foothills. The city is secondary to the mountains, the Atlantic surf, the tropical lagoons, and the Tijuca Forest reclaimed from old plantations. I can see the rounded incline of Sugarloaf Mountain, past which departing jet planes make a dramatic fly-by as if to remind those leaving the city what they’re missing out on as they head out above the bay where rocky islands are fringed with white sand.

I can see it all: the Joao Batista cemetery, the largest in the city; the pyramid structure of Rio’s brutalist-styled cathedral; the vast port where the bones of thousands of slaves were uncovered in the 1990s; even the carnival stands of the samba schools. But there’s no hiding the visual reality of Rio’s deep inequality. Favelas sit cheek by jowl with the smarter parts of the city as it fans north into the distance.

The famous beach enclaves of Copacabana and Ipanema are tiny in this context. Gazing down on Rio’s southern suburbs, my eye is drawn to Botafogo, where I’m staying. This under-the-tourist-radar neighbourhood is the next along from Copacabana, set between hills of Mundo Novo and Dona Marta and São João, the latter separating it from that famous beach. Its tree-lined streets end in the perfect crescent of Praia de Botafogo and the sailboat-speckled Guanabara Bay. No one swims in it, though, as the bayside waters are grubbier than the ocean waves of Copacabana, Ipanema or Leblon.