The Drive to Petrópolis
The road out of Teresópolis — whose name honours the Empress Teresa Cristina, wife of Dom Pedro II — drops south on the BR-485 across the ridge of the Serra da Estrela before joining the BR-040, the old Washington Luís highway that connects Rio to Petrópolis and eventually all the way to Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais. The stretch between Petrópolis and Rio de Janeiro was the first asphalt-paved road in Brazil, inaugurated in 1928 during the presidency of Washington Luís. The road descends through forested ridges, passing the Baixada Fluminense spread below, before climbing again toward Petrópolis.
Petrópolis
Petrópolis takes its name from Emperor Pedro II, under whose patronage it was founded. The town was conceived by the German engineer Major Julius Friedrich Koeler, who laid it out as an urban nucleus around a summer palace, attracting large numbers of well-to-do residents from Rio de Janeiro who came to escape the heat and the recurring yellow fever outbreaks of the capital. Emperor Pedro II ruled for forty-nine years and spent at least forty summers here, sometimes for up to five months at a stretch.
The centre repays a short walk. The Museu Imperial — the former summer palace, completed in 1847 — houses the regalia of the Brazilian empire, including the crown of Dom Pedro II and the Golden Sceptre, and its gardens give a fair sense of the scale of the court's summer retreat. A short walk away stands the neogothic Catedral de São Pedro de Alcântara, where Pedro II, Empress Teresa Cristina, and Princess Isabel are entombed. The Palácio de Cristal, a glass-and-iron structure built in 1884 as a gift for Princess Isabel, and A Encantada, the small summer house built by Santos Dumont in 1918 with its staircase too narrow for the fat and the idle, are both within easy reach of the historic centre.