Copacabana Boardwalk

The world’s most famous beach boardwalk, Copacabana gained its greatest fame during Brazil’s cultural boom in the first half of the 20th century. The Copacabana Palace Hotel, formerly a legendary casino, attracted playboys and debutantes from all over the world. Soon, this wide strip of white sand and blue waves became the summer playground for international travelers. The beach is the sight of international surfing competitions, beach volleyball and foot-volleyball competitions (a terrific sport to watch if you haven’t seen it before), television shows, and Capoeira demonstrations every week during the summer. Residents of Rio come to the beach for morning and afternoon jogs and walks down the boardwalk and there are bike lanes for the many cyclists that come here. On Sundays during the summer, the city blocks one side of the street to traffic to facilitate all this movement and there are arts and crafts for sale and bikes for rent all day on Sunday.

The aforementioned activities notwithstanding, by far the most popular activity at Copacabana is people-watching and there are beach kiosks with tables and chairs overlooking the sand for just that purpose. It’s common to see Brazilian celebrities and professional athletes walking here or playing foot-volley on the beach; many of them live right here in Copacabana. On the far side of the coastal highway are numerous condominium buildings (Paulo Coelho and Caetano Veloso are just two famed Brazilians with apartments overlooking the beach), top-end hotels, restaurants, bars, and stores.

At night, Copacabana becomes a cauldron of activities, most involving the tourist trade. If visitors are not being assaulted on one end of Copacabana (the north end), they are being hustled by prostitutes on the other (the middle and south end mostly). There are some popular dance clubs here, but most of them are packed with prostitutes and foreigners. The color of the night in Copacabana is definitely red and almost everybody on the street is looking to buy, sell, or steal something. The inland roads that parallel Copacabana (of which there are two main ones besides Avenida Atlântica on the coast) are generally less and less radical the more inland you go. The first street, Avenida Nossa Sra. de Copacabana, is the most active. You’ll find restaurants, lunch buffets, markets, boutique shops, shopping malls, movie theaters, cheap hotels, expensive hotels. . . just about anything and everything is there. You can take this street all the way to the Praia do Diabo, where you can cross over into Ipanema. The next street is Rua Barata Ribeiro, which is a milder version of the other. The south end of Ribeiro goes into the tunnel that leads to Ipanema and you can pick up a bus going out that way (better to go under than over, since the hill is home to two of Rio’s grand favelas).

Note: The south end of Copacabana and the inland streets are relatively safe to walk around. The northern end is not. If you are staying in the northern end of Copacabana, be sure to take taxis to other parts of the city. Also, the ocean at Copacabana is generally considered to be polluted and not suitable for swimming, although sources differ on this point.

Walking Tour of Copacabana
If you walk down the boardwalk in Copacabana, there are a few things you should be sure to include in your journey—occasionally coming in off the beach for a block or two to catch an interesting attraction on the inland streets. Before starting out, remember that this journey is farther than it appears on the maps and will take a few hours to complete. The same is true for a walking tour of Ipanema and Leblon afterward. If you’re not up for a day on foot, look into renting a bicycle to make this journey.

At the very top of Copacabana sits the Morro de Leme and there’s a trail that you can take out across the base of the mount to get a fabulous view of the beach. The trail is called the Caminho dos Pescadores (Fisherman’s Way). Coming down toward the middle of the beach (between station 3 and station 2) is the famous Copacabana Palace Hotel, the first hotel built in Copacabana, in 1923. It was frequented by the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, Walt Disney, and Queen Elizabeth II. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced and filmed together inside. Today, it remains one of the city’s most luxurious hotels, although the casino shut down in 1946. You can stop for an afternoon tea in their tearoom for only R$40. Reservations are recommended. Walk into town along Rua Paula Freitas up to Rua Barata Ribeiro, then turn left and continue until you see the Baratos da Ribeiro Bookstore (Rua Barata Ribeiro 354), where you’ll find all kinds of treasures. Back toward the beach down at station 5, you’ll find the Roxy Theater (Av. Nossa Sra. da Copacabana at Rua Bolivar), which was built in the 1930s and still shows art and feature films, including a 3 p.m. matinee. On the boardwalk, just south of the Othon Palace Hotel is the famous nightclub Help, which gets going every night around midnight with driving music and plenty of drinking and dancing. It is located in an old movie house. At the far end of the beach at station 6 is the Fisherman’s Colony, where you can find the fresh catch of the day to take home with you.

Crossing from Copacabana to Ipanema on foot, you will walk past the southern end of Copacabana, where you’ll see fishing boats and fishermen working their trade, as if from the first half of the 1900s. You’ll see trees lining the point called Arpoador, where the Copacabana Fort (10 a.m.–6 p.m. Tues.–Sun.) is located. Built in 1914, the fort contains the Museu Histórico do Exército and some interesting German Krupp canons, along with maps and documents from Brazilian naval history. The fort offers an excellent view of Copacabana, which you can see from the patio of the Confeitaria Colombo coffee shop inside—an excellent place to sit for awhile. The walk out to the fort is also a pleasure.