Nearly four hundred years ago, in the year 1552, Thomé de Souza, after landing in Rio, wrote: “Tudo e graca que se dele pode decir”—“Everything here is of a beauty which can hardly be described.” Actually, no one could express it better than did this rugged warrior. The beauty of this town, this scenery, is not easy to describe. It defies words; it defies photography; for it is too varied, too overwhelming, too inexhaustible. Even an artist wanting to reveal Rio in its entirety, with all its thousand colours and its landscape, could not complete such a work in a lifetime; because Nature in an exceptional mood of extravagance has concentrated here into a small space all the elements of scenic beauty which elsewhere are distributed over whole countries. The sea is here, but the sea in all its forms and colours; from the limitless… Atlantic Ocean it comes foaming green onto the beach at Copacabana; it comes leaping furiously round the isolated rocks near Gavea; and again in Nicteroi it lies clinging, smooth and blue, to the white beach, or closely hugs the islands. There are mountains, but each summit, each incline, is of a different shape and texture—the one rough, grey, and rocky, the other green and soft; the Pão de Assucar rises sharply into a point; the heights of Gavea are flattened out as though by a gigantic hammer; while the great range of Dedo de Deus, the Finger of God, is torn and jagged. Though each obstinately preserves its own peculiar character, yet all unite to form, so to speak, one family group. There are lakes, such as the Lagoa do Freitas and the Tijuca, reflecting the mountains, the landscape, and incidentally the electric lights of the town; there are cool and foamy waterfalls cascading down from rocks; and there are streams and rivers—water, in fact, in all its elusive forms. Everywhere green is in evidence, and every shade of green. The jungle, with its luxuriantly growing lianas and impenetrable undergrowth, creeps up almost to the gates of the city. There are parks and well-kept gardens filed with every tropical tree, fruit, and shrub, all in apparent confusion, but in reality planted with the wisdom and care born of experience. And in the midst of this exuberant, yet harmonious, tropical growth, lies the city itself—a forest of stone, with its skyscrapers and small palaces, its avenues and squares, its small oriental streets full of colour, its… huts and gigantic ministries, its bathing beaches and casinos: a town of luxury, a port town, a town for business, for foreigners, for industry, and government officials. And above it all a blessed sky, a canopy of dark blue in the daytime, and at night one studded with southern stars.

On the whole earth—and anyone having seen it once will agree with me—there is no more beautiful city, and it is unlikely that there exists one more unfathomable, more difficult to get to know. There seems no end to its mysteries. Even the sea has made of the coast a strange zig-zagging line, and the mountain slopes follow it all the way. Everywhere are curves and corners; streets cross each other at random; over and over again one loses one’s way. In the belief that one has reached one’s destination, one realizes it is but a new beginning. On leaving a bay in an attempt to reach the centre of the town, one is astonished to find oneself at yet another bay. At each turn there is something new to discover—a surprising view from the hills, a small square looking as though it had been forgotten since colonial days, a market, a palm-lined canal, a garden, or a favella. By accidentally taking a side-street near a spot one has passed a hundred times, a new world suddenly appears. Before long one feels as though one were standing on a revolving platform, being constantly offered new things to see. …On all sides something is going on; everywhere there is colour, light, and movement. Nothing repeats itself; everything seems a jumble, yet all is in place. Strolling… is here a joy, offering daily an exciting discovery. From the window of a friend’s sixth-floor apartment, the bay, spread out before one with its shimmering islands and gliding steamers, is broad and majestic as one has never seen it before. But from a back room of the same apartment; the sea has disappeared, and there is the Cross of Corcovado glowing against the dark sky. The lights of the streets are shining miles into the distance; while below, bending over the balcony, one sees a… village with its little huts and coloured lights. Driving out of the town onto a road that passes over a mountain, one feels compelled every few minutes to ask one’s friend to stop so as not to miss one more astounding aspect of this city. Wandering through a suburb, enjoying the charm and colour of the small shops, one is suddenly amongst large feudal palacetes and their century-old gardens. Near Santa Theresa one takes a trolly-car up the mountain with the idea of getting away from civilization, only to run into an eighteenth-century aqueduct, and a few minutes later to find oneself surrounded by a group of high apartment houses. In a quarter of an hour one can move from the sea shore to the top of a mountain; in five minutes from a world of luxury… to the cosmopolitan bustle of life—to brilliant cafés and the maelstrom of automobiles. Everything here is a whirlpool of confusion, everything and everybody moving this way and that—poor and rich, Nature and civilization, huts and skyscrapers, Negro and white, old-fashioned carriages and automobiles, beach and rock and green and macadam. One never tires of it, never has enough. The full profile of this city is never properly seen, for it has dozens, even hundreds. It is different from each aspect, each perspective—different from the inside, from the outside, from above, from below, from the mountains, the street, the aeroplane, and the ferry; different from each house, from every floor and room of each house. A man from Rio finds the colours of all other towns lacking in intensity… After Rio… all else seems sober and weak.

In Rio everyone can live as he likes. … The sea is free for bathing, beauty free for all eyes; …people are kind; and the variety of those small daily surprises which help to bring contentment to people without their knowing why is inexhaustible. There is something soft and relaxing in the air, making humanity less aggressive… Here one is constantly absorbing pleasure through the eye; a mysterious comfort radiates from this landscape as from anything beautiful and exceptional on this earth. With its myriad stars and lights at night, by day its dazzling, hot, and explosive colours, its scented sultriness and its tropical cloudbursts, this town is always enchanting.
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…no one wants to miss the famous moment of arrival in Rio de Janeiro.