Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is a big city in Brazil.

It is next to the Atlantic Ocean. Tall green mountains stand in the city. There are long, sandy beaches. Lots of people just call it Rio.

Rio de Janeiro sits on Brazil's Atlantic coast, close to the Tropic of Capricorn. About 6.7 million people lived in the city in 2025, and nearly 12 million live in Greater Rio, the city and the towns around it.

The city's name comes from a mistake. Portuguese sailors arrived on January 1, 1502, and thought the narrow entrance of the bay was the mouth of a river. In Portuguese, rio means river and janeiro means January, so the name means River of January. People from Rio are called Cariocas.

Rio de Janeiro lies on a stretch of Brazil's Atlantic coast near the Tropic of Capricorn, where the shore runs east to west, so the city largely faces south. It was founded on Guanabara Bay, whose entrance is marked by the granite peak of Sugarloaf. The name records an error: Portuguese navigators who arrived on January 1, 1502, took the bay's entrance for a river mouth.

The municipality covers 1,255 km² and Greater Rio 5,384 km². The 2022 census counted 6,625,849 people in the city and 11,875,063 in Greater Rio; the official estimate for 2025 is 6,730,729. Rio was the colonial capital from 1763 and the national capital from independence in 1822 until 1960, when the government moved to the new city of Brasília. It is now the capital of Rio de Janeiro state, and Britannica calls it the country's main center for cultural events, leisure and tourism.

On top of a tall mountain stands a giant statue with open arms. It is called Christ the Redeemer.

Another mountain, Sugarloaf, rises out of the bay. Cable cars carry people to the top. Down below are long beaches, like Copacabana.

High on the mountain called Corcovado, 704 meters up, stands Christ the Redeemer, a 30-meter statue of Jesus with his arms spread wide. It was finished in 1931, and a train climbs the mountain to reach it.

At the entrance to the bay rises Sugarloaf, a bare granite peak 395 meters high. Since 1912, cable cars have carried visitors up, first to Urca Hill and then to the top. Along the ocean stretch famous beaches such as Copacabana and Ipanema. Maracanã Stadium hosts the city's biggest soccer matches, and the Metropolitan Cathedral is shaped like a giant cone.

Christ the Redeemer, an Art Deco statue of reinforced concrete clad in soapstone tiles, was built from 1926 to 1931 on the 704 m summit of Corcovado; it is 30 m tall with arms spanning 28 m, on a pedestal about 8 m high. A funicular railroad starts in the Cosme Velho neighborhood. Sugarloaf (395 m) guards the entrance to Guanabara Bay; its cable car opened in two sections, 528 m from Praia Vermelha to Urca Hill on October 27, 1912, and 735 m on to the summit in 1913.

In 2012 UNESCO inscribed "Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea", from the peaks of Tijuca National Park down to the sea, including the Botanical Garden (1808), Corcovado and the designed landscapes along Copacabana. In the Centre, the Metropolitan Cathedral is a modernist cone with stained-glass windows 60 m high, and the Municipal Theatre is almost a replica of the Paris Opera House.

Many people in Rio ride buses.

There are trains under the ground too. A very long bridge crosses the bay to another city. Planes land at an airport right beside the water.

Buses are the main way most people get around Rio. The city began building its subway in 1972, and the first station opened in 1979 to help with the city's heavy traffic. Mountains split the city into zones, so roads squeeze between peaks and dive through tunnels.

The Rio–Niterói Bridge, about 13 kilometers long, crosses Guanabara Bay to the city of Niterói. Galeão–Antonio Carlos Jobim Airport, on Governador Island, has flights around the world, and Santos Dumont Airport was built on land filled into the bay. Rio's port is one of Brazil's busiest.

Britannica notes that privately owned buses are the main public transport within the urban area. Construction of the subway began in 1972 and its first station opened in 1979; the system is efficient but less extensive than São Paulo's. Because a mountain ridge runs east to west, travel between the North Zone and the Centre and South Zone is slow, and the opening of the Yellow Line highway in the late 1990s, with tunnels through the mountains, opened up the West Zone for growth.

The Rio–Niterói Bridge across Guanabara Bay opened in 1974 and is about 13.3 km long (Wikidata). Galeão–Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport on Governador Island handles domestic and international flights, while Santos Dumont Airport stands on landfill in the bay next to the Centre. The port is among Brazil's leading ports by tonnage, and railways link the region with São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, though daily service is limited. History left its mark too: horse-drawn buses began in 1838 and the first railroad, to Petrópolis, in 1852.

Rio is warm almost all year.

Summer comes in December, when it is hot and rainy. Winter comes in June, and it is mild. Ocean breezes help keep the city cool.

Rio is south of the equator, and its seasons come in different months from North America's. Summer runs from December to March and is hot, with heavy showers. Winter, from June to September, is mild and drier. Over the whole year, the average temperature is about 23 °C.

Breezes blowing on and off the sea soften the heat along the coast. The mountains catch wet winds from the Atlantic, so they get more rain than the beaches. Cold fronts from the direction of Antarctica sometimes sweep in during autumn and winter and change the weather quickly.

Rio's climate is tropical, hot and humid, but Britannica stresses how much it is shaped by the city's relief, the nearby ocean and the shape of South America's Southern Cone. A breeze that blows alternately onshore and offshore moderates coastal temperatures, and cold fronts advancing from Antarctica bring frequent changes, especially in autumn and winter. The annual average is about 23 °C.

Summer (December to March) is hotter and wetter, and its strong showers can cause catastrophic floods and landslides on the steep slopes. Winter (June to September) is mild and generally less rainy. The mountains act as a barrier to humid Atlantic winds, so rainfall rises with elevation; the Jardim Botânico district, beneath coastal peaks, receives more than 1,600 mm a year. The forested Tijuca massif, rising to 1,021 m, runs through the middle of the city.

People in Rio love the beach.

They swim, walk and play games on the sand. Soccer is the most popular sport. Every year there is a big party called Carnival, with music and dancing in the streets.

Cariocas come from many backgrounds, with European, African and mixed ancestry, and many families moved here from other parts of Brazil. The beaches are a favorite place to relax, and people in swimsuits walk the streets near the shore and even ride the buses.

Soccer is the most popular sport, and teams such as Flamengo, Fluminense, Botafogo and Vasco da Gama are known around the world. Each year Carnival fills four days with music and costumes. Samba schools, which are neighborhood clubs, spend months preparing their parades. Rio is also home to the National Library, founded in 1810, and the Botanical Garden, from 1808.

Britannica describes Rio's inhabitants as a microcosm of Brazil's ethnic diversity, of European, African and mixed ancestry. Domestic migration drove most growth: in some years it supplied two-thirds of the increase, and by 1960 almost half of residents had been born elsewhere in Brazil. The 1950s were the fastest decade, with the city growing by nearly 40 percent. Neighborhoods differ sharply in income; favelas, informal settlements, cover many steep hillsides and some marshy lowlands.

Carnival lasts four days, and its high point is the samba schools' parade in the sambódromo, which holds about 60,000 spectators; the schools are community associations, some active all year. The main football clubs are Flamengo, Vasco da Gama, Botafogo and Fluminense, with major matches at Maracanã. Greater Rio is Brazil's second most important industrial area after São Paulo, and the oil company Petrobras has its headquarters in the Centre. Cultural institutions include the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the National Museum of Fine Arts (1818) and the National Library (1810), founded with books brought from Portugal after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.