10 Top Things to Do in Rio de Janeiro

Sugarloaf Mountain, or Pao de Acucar, is a 396-metre granite plug at the mouth of Guanabara Bay. You reach it in two cable car stages from Praia Vermelha in Urca: first to Morro da Urca at 220 metres, then across to the main summit. The original line opened in 1912 and was the third aerial cableway built anywhere in the world. Cars leave every 20 minutes or so and the full ride takes under 10 minutes.

A return ticket costs around R$ 190 (about 30 EUR), with lower rates for Brazilian residents. Morro da Urca has a cafe, a small stage and a bar; the upper summit has decks facing Copacabana on one side and the bay on the other. Fit walkers can take the marked trail up to Morro da Urca for free and buy a single-stage ticket for the second leg, which cuts the cost roughly in half. Allow two hours.

Copacabana Beach runs roughly 4 km from the Leme end down to Forte de Copacabana, backed by Roberto Burle Marx's black-and-white wave paving along Avenida Atlantica. The sand is split by numbered lifeguard postos and each stretch has its own regulars: families and kiosks around Posto 4, footvolley courts nearer Posto 5, fishing boats pulled up on the sand at the Leme end. A kiosk chair and umbrella for the day costs around R$ 30 (roughly 5 EUR).

Forte de Copacabana at the southern tip is worth the R$ 10 (about 2 EUR) entry for the terrace view back along the whole curve. On Sunday mornings the seaward lane of Avenida Atlantica closes to traffic and fills with runners and cyclists. The undertow is genuine, so swim between the flags. Take what you need to the sand and leave the rest where you are staying.

Ipanema picks up where Copacabana leaves off, on the far side of the Arpoador headland. The mood is calmer, the water is often clearer, and the postos again mark the tribes: Posto 9 for the young crowd, Posto 8 at Rua Farme de Amoedo for the LGBTQ+ scene, the Leblon end for families. Behind the sand, Rua Visconde de Piraja is the main shopping street, and the Feira Hippie de Ipanema fills Praca General Osorio every Sunday.

Arpoador is the rock at the eastern end and the best free viewpoint in the South Zone. People climb it in the last hour of daylight, watch the sun drop behind the Dois Irmaos peaks, and applaud when it goes. Surfers work the break below all year. The climb takes four minutes on a paved path from Praca Garota de Ipanema and costs nothing.

Escadaria Selaron is a 125-step staircase climbing from Rua Joaquim Silva in Lapa toward Santa Teresa, covered in more than 2,000 ceramic tiles. The Chilean artist Jorge Selaron started tiling the steps outside his house in 1990 and kept at it for 23 years, swapping tiles as visitors posted them from home. Around 60 countries are represented somewhere on the risers. Green, yellow and blue dominate, the colours of the Brazilian flag.

Entry is free, the steps are open at all hours, and 20 minutes covers the walk up and back with photo stops. Early morning is the only quiet window - by 10:00 the lower flight is a queue of tripods. This is a working residential street rather than an enclosed site, and the top end opens onto much calmer lanes.

Santa Teresa sits on a hill above Lapa - cobbled lanes, colonial houses, artist studios and small restaurants clustered around Largo do Guimaraes and Largo das Neves. The way to arrive is the bonde, the yellow open-sided tram running since 1877, which crosses the Arcos da Lapa aqueduct on its way up. It leaves from Estacao Carioca on Rua Lelio Gama and the fare is R$ 20 (about 3 EUR) return.

Departures run roughly every 30 minutes from 09:00. Since the line was rebuilt, only seated passengers are carried, so a midday queue at Carioca can mean a 40-minute wait. Two branches operate, one to Dois Irmaos and one to Paula Mattos. Get off at Largo do Guimaraes for most of the restaurants and for the Museu Chacara do Ceu, a small collection with a garden that looks straight over the bay.

Tijuca National Park covers roughly 40 square kilometres of Atlantic forest inside the city limits, one of the largest urban forests anywhere. Most of it was replanted by hand from 1861 onward after coffee clearing stripped the slopes, which makes it a 160-year-old restoration project as much as a wilderness. Entry is free. The Alto da Boa Vista sector holds the Cascatinha Taunay waterfall, the Mayrink chapel and the Vista Chinesa lookout.

Pico da Tijuca is the serious walk here: about 5 km return from Bom Retiro, finishing on a chain-assisted scramble to a 1,021-metre summit with both Corcovado and Sugarloaf in one view. Allow three to four hours. Shorter options include the 40-minute loop to Cascatinha Taunay. Gates open at 08:00 and close at 17:00, with last entry well before that.

Museu do Amanha, the Museum of Tomorrow, opened in 2015 on a pier at Praca Maua as the centrepiece of the port regeneration. Santiago Calatrava designed it: a 75-metre cantilever over the water, solar spines that track the sun, and a cooling system drawing on bay water. Inside, it is a science museum about climate, demography and the next 50 years, built around projections and data rather than objects in cases.

Entry is around R$ 30 (roughly 5 EUR) and Tuesdays are free. Next door, the Museu de Arte do Rio occupies two joined buildings on the same square. Between them runs Eduardo Kobra's Etnias mural, 190 metres of painted faces from five continents and the largest spray-painted mural in the world when it was finished for the 2016 Olympics. The square works as one two-hour stop.

The Arcos da Lapa are the 18th-century aqueduct that defines the neighbourhood: 42 arches, 270 metres long, 17.6 metres high, completed in 1750 to carry water from the Carioca river into the city. Water stopped running through them in 1896 and the tram took over the upper deck instead. They are floodlit at night and the Santa Teresa bonde still crosses them, which keeps the structure a working piece of infrastructure rather than a monument.

Below the arches, Lapa is the live music district. Friday and Saturday nights fill Rua do Lavradio and Avenida Mem de Sa with samba clubs, gafieira dance halls and street bars, and the crowd spills into the road. Rio Scenarium and Carioca da Gema are the long-running rooms, with cover charges of R$ 40 to R$ 80 (roughly 6 to 13 EUR). Once a month an antiques fair takes over Rua do Lavradio.

The Jardim Botanico was laid out in 1808 under Dom Joao VI and now holds about 6,500 species across 54 hectares at the foot of Corcovado. Its signature is the Avenida das Palmeiras Imperiais, a double row of imperial palms 30 metres tall, all descended from a single original tree. There is an orchid house with more than 600 species, a Japanese garden, an Amazon section and a greenhouse of insectivorous plants.

Toucans, marmosets and capuchin monkeys are routine sightings rather than lucky ones. Entry is around R$ 79 (about 12 EUR) for non-residents, and the garden opens 08:00 to 17:00, Mondays from 12:00. Two hours covers the main paths at a slow pace. Neighbouring Parque Lage, five minutes away, is free and has a mansion courtyard cafe looking straight up at the statue.