Rio de Janeiro

Christ the Redeemer, the Art Deco statue crowning Corcovado mountain, took nine years to build and was completed in 1931 — a scale of ambition matched by its setting, since the mountain sits inside Tijuca National Park, the largest urban rainforest anywhere in the world, giving Rio a genuine wilderness core that few major cities can claim within their own limits.

Copacabana and Ipanema, Rio's two most famous beaches, sit side by side along the city's southern coastline, each with a distinct character: Ipanema, framed by the distinctive twin-peaked Two Brothers mountains, draws a slightly more local, upscale crowd, while the longer Copacabana stays busier and more tourist-oriented, lined with beachside kiosks selling coconut water and grilled cheese on skewers.

Sugarloaf Mountain, reached by a cable car running since 1912, gives a second major panoramic viewpoint distinct from Corcovado's — closer to the bay, taking in the harbor, the beaches, and the surrounding granite peaks that give Rio its dramatic, mountain-meets-ocean geography.

Santa Teresa, a hillside neighborhood connected to the rest of the city by a historic tram, has developed into Rio's bohemian, artsy district — cobblestone streets, colonial-era mansions, and galleries, a genuinely different pace from the beach neighborhoods below. Nearby, the Selarón Steps, over 200 steps covered in more than 2,000 tiles gathered from over 60 countries by Chilean artist Jorge Selarón over two decades, have become one of Rio's most photographed spots.

Rio's reputation for danger runs somewhat ahead of the reality most tourists actually experience — the main visitor areas are heavily policed and generally safe with ordinary urban caution, and the favelas, while genuinely complex and often stigmatized, are increasingly visited respectfully through community-led tours that give visitors a more accurate picture than headlines alone provide.