Sugarloaf, Santa Teresa and the Selarón Steps With a Private Guide

A day through Rio's other icons: a granite peak above the bay, a staircase made of the world's tiles, and a hilltop neighborhood of artists.

A City Written on Its Skyline

Few cities wear their history as visibly as Rio: a monument on a mountaintop, a granite peak rising from the bay, and a staircase built tile by tile by one devoted artist. With a private guide, you string them together into a single day, taking in the neighborhoods around them as you go. For the statue on Corcovado, see our dedicated private Christ the Redeemer moment; this day is about the rest of Rio’s icons.

Up Sugarloaf by Cable Car

At the mouth of Guanabara Bay, Sugarloaf climbs 396 meters, its granite formed over 600 million years ago. Its cable car opened in 1912, making it just the world’s third passenger cable car, and it still rises in two stages from Praia Vermelha via Morro da Urca to the summit. From the top you look across Copacabana, Flamengo Park and, on the far side of the city, the statue on Corcovado.

Your guide fills in the stories, including the sugar trade that gave the mountain its name.

The Staircase of the World

Between Lapa and Santa Teresa, the Escadaria Selarón rises 215 steps, covered in over 2,000 tiles sourced from more than 60 nations. The Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón started in 1990 by fixing up the stairway outside his home, then spent 23 years swapping and adding tiles, right up to his death in 2013, calling it a living artwork that never stopped changing. Some 300 tiles repeat one image, a pregnant African woman, which became his signature and which he never chose to explain.

Santa Teresa’s Hilltop Streets

Above the steps, Santa Teresa spreads across cobbled lanes and 19th-century mansions. The Bondinho tram has served it since 1877, the longest-running electric tram line in Latin America, and part of its route crosses an old aqueduct. At the neighborhood’s heart, the galleries and bars of Largo do Guimarães are a legacy of the painters and musicians who made the neighborhood their home in the decades up to the 1960s.

At Your Pace

A private guide lets the day follow the light and your mood: longer at the summit if the sky is clear, more time among Santa Teresa’s lanes if they’ve caught your imagination. Reaching Sugarloaf before the crowds changes the experience entirely.

Finish with sunset on Ipanema, where the rainbow flags near Rua Farme de Amoedo mark the city’s best-known LGBTQ+ stretch of beach. Your Out Of Office specialist plans the day around you, and our Brazil guide covers LGBTQ+ rights and practical advice.