Copacabana

Copacabana

From Arpoador, Copacabana Beach begins immediately — a different register entirely from Ipanema's relative calm. The promenade runs 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) in a long curve, busy at almost any hour with vendors, joggers, football, and the endless rotation of beach chairs. The neighbourhood behind it carries more of the old city's weight: dense, mid-century residential blocks with ground-floor bars and bakeries, a more working-class grain than the neighbourhood to the west. The name itself traces back to Bolivia: in the 17th century, silver merchants from the altiplano brought a replica of the Virgin of Copacabana — patroness of the lakeside town on Lago Titicaca — to Rio's then-unnamed beach, built a small chapel in her honour, and the name gradually displaced the original Tupi toponym. The Bolivian town you'll reach two months from now is where this thread begins. The beach itself runs from the Arpoador end to Forte de Copacabana at the southern tip, a military fort inaugurated in 1914 that now operates partly as a museum.

The afternoon here is for walking the promenade, taking a seat at one of the kiosks, or simply watching the city at the edge of the ocean.