the Sheraton Grand at the end of Leblon, for the beach, the pool and the view. Ask for an upper floor.

What about the helicopter?

a helicopter flight over the city, with Christ the Redeemer at eye level. Flights leave from the Lagoa heliport or from Morro da Urca.

What to see in a day?

the MAC, the Museum of Tomorrow and the cathedral in one day, with an architecture tour or on your own.

How to cross the bay?

the ferry from Praça XV to Niterói takes about 20 minutes.

Rio de Janeiro, from the air and in concrete

In April 2026 we spent a few days in Rio de Janeiro, based at the Sheraton Grand Rio Hotel & Resort, right where Leblon ends and Avenida Niemeyer starts along the coast.

A resort on the beach

The Sheraton Grand is a tall white tower below the Vidigal hillside and the rock face of Dois Irmãos. It opened in 1974 as the Sheraton-Rio, 26 floors in a cove of its own, and it is still the only hotel in Rio on the beach side of the road: you walk from the pool straight onto the sand of Praia do Vidigal, where loungers, umbrellas and towels are waiting. There are tennis courts in the garden, and a view along the whole curve of Leblon and Ipanema. Get up for at least one sunrise.

The hill behind the hotel is Dois Irmãos, the Two Brothers, 533 metres of granite. The trail to the top starts at the upper end of Vidigal and takes 30 to 60 minutes; from the summit you look down on Ipanema, Leblon, the lagoon and across to Christ the Redeemer.

Aerial view of the Sheraton Grand tower with its pool, tennis courts and beach below a steep rock face — The hotel, its pool and its beach, from the helicopter · 10 April

Ask for an upper floor: the rooms there are renovated and fresher than the ones lower down. The whole hotel was done up for the 2016 Olympics, but the top floors are where it shows. From the balcony the sun comes up behind the hills at the far end of Ipanema, with the beach still empty. Order a caipirinha at the pool bar; the drinks by the pool are excellent. Leblon's restaurants are about 15 minutes away on foot along Avenida Niemeyer, or a short ride.

Sunrise over the curve of Leblon and Ipanema beach, city and mountains in silhouette against an orange sky — Sunrise over Leblon and Ipanema, seen from the hotel · 8 April

The white tower of the Sheraton Grand seen from below against a deep blue sky, a tree in the corner — The Sheraton Grand · 12 April

See it from a helicopter

Rio makes the most sense from the air: a city squeezed between granite peaks, forest and the Atlantic. Flights leave from the heliport on Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, the lagoon behind Ipanema, or from the helipad on Morro da Urca at the foot of Sugarloaf. The short ones last six or seven minutes and stay over the beaches; the longer ones, 20 to 35 minutes, loop past Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf and the Tijuca forest.

Our flight went past Vidigal and the hotel first. From up here the whole corner makes sense: the white tower in its cove, the favela climbing the slope behind it, the bare granite of Dois Irmãos, and the surf breaking on the rocks below. Then past Christ the Redeemer at eye level, with Copacabana spread out below. It was a cloudy morning, and still worth every minute.

Aerial view of the Vidigal hillside and the rock face of Dois Irmãos, the white Sheraton Grand tower above a beach with rough surf — Dois Irmãos, Vidigal and the Sheraton Grand · 10 April

Aerial view over green hills and dense city blocks to the long curve of Copacabana beach and the Atlantic — Copacabana from the helicopter · 10 April

The statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms on the forested granite peak of Corcovado — Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado, from the helicopter

The statue is 30 metres tall on an 8-metre pedestal, its arms span 28 metres, and it has stood on the 700-metre summit of Corcovado since 1931: reinforced concrete under a skin of soapstone. Copacabana below it runs for four kilometres between two forts, with Roberto Burle Marx's black-and-white wave pattern along the promenade. The phone recorded 859 metres of altitude when the Copacabana picture was taken; from up there, the curve of the beach is the whole picture.

One day, three buildings

Rio is a great city for architecture. Book an architecture tour, or do it yourself: we saw all three of these buildings in one day.

Start across the bay in Niterói, at Oscar Niemeyer's Museum of Contemporary Art, the MAC, opened in 1996. The white saucer is 16 metres high and 50 metres across, three floors on a single stem, standing in a pool of water that Niemeyer likened to a flower. A ramp curls up to the entrance, and from under the rim you look straight across the water to Sugarloaf. The ferry from Praça XV crosses to Niterói in about 20 minutes; from the terminal it's a short taxi ride, and the museum is the best-known stop on the Caminho Niemeyer, the string of his buildings along the Niterói waterfront.

Oscar Niemeyer's white, saucer-shaped museum above green bushes, the bay and hills behind under a blue sky — The MAC in Niterói · 9 April

Sugarloaf Mountain across the blue bay, seen below the curved white rim and window band of the museum, a sailboat on the water — Sugarloaf across the bay, from under the MAC · 9 April

Back in Rio, Santiago Calatrava's Museum of Tomorrow (Museu do Amanhã) opened on Pier Mauá in December 2015, part of the port's makeover before the 2016 Olympics. Walk along the outside before you go in: the long white building is lined with angled fins, and they move. They carry solar panels that tilt through the day to follow the sun, and the pool the building seems to float in is bay water, pumped through to cool the museum and released again. Inside, 5,000 square metres of exhibitions ask where the planet is heading, and a huge ribbed window fills the end of the hall.

The long white side of the Museum of Tomorrow, lined with angled fins, palm trees in front under a cloudy sky — The Museum of Tomorrow on Pier Mauá · 9 April

A vast ribbed glass window at the end of a bright white hall, people on the polished floor — The window at the end of the hall · 9 April

The hidden gem: a brutalist cathedral

The one we'd send everyone to is downtown: the Catedral Metropolitana de São Sebastião. From the street it's a 75-metre cone of raw concrete, 106 metres across at the base. Edgar de Oliveira da Fonseca modelled it on the Mayan pyramids of Yucatán, a shape he chose so that everyone inside stands equal before God. It was built between 1964 and 1979 and holds 20,000 people standing, 5,000 seated.

Inside, four stained-glass windows rise 64 metres from floor to ceiling and meet in a glass cross at the top. Each stands for one word of the creed: green for one, red for holy, blue for catholic, yellow for apostolic. The rest is bare concrete, and the light does the work.

Brutalism fans should turn round on the way out. Across Avenida República do Chile stands the Petrobras headquarters, Roberto Luís Gandolfi's 29-storey concrete block of 1967–72, with gardens by Roberto Burle Marx built into it. The two were finished five years apart, and they belong together.

Inside the concrete cone of Rio's cathedral: tall stained-glass windows in red, yellow and green rise between walls of square openings to a glass cross — Inside the Catedral Metropolitana · 9 April

If you go

Pro tip

Suitcases, not duffles. Leave the duffle bag at home and travel with suitcases only. In Brazil, it lowers the risk of your luggage going missing.

Where to stay? the Sheraton Grand at the end of Leblon, for the beach, the pool and the view. Ask for an upper floor.
What about the helicopter? a helicopter flight over the city, with Christ the Redeemer at eye level. Flights leave from the Lagoa heliport or from Morro da Urca.
What to see in a day? the MAC, the Museum of Tomorrow and the cathedral in one day, with an architecture tour or on your own.
How to cross the bay? the ferry from Praça XV to Niterói takes about 20 minutes.