Rio's culture runs from Burle Marx gardens and Niemeyer's flying saucer museum to the gilded Theatro Municipal and the Little Africa dockside where samba was born. Three days of galleries, modernist architecture and street-level art.
Brazil's national fine arts museum in a 1908 Beaux-Arts palace on Cinelândia, holding 20,000 works — Victor Meirelles, Almeida Júnior and Portinari alongside European masters. Open Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, weekends 12:00-17:00.
Edgar Fonseca's 1979 modernist cone rises 75m with four stained-glass strips running floor to ceiling, seating 5,000 and standing 20,000. Free entry daily 07:00-17:00; the sacred art museum in the basement costs extra.
The 1743 colonial palace where Dom Pedro declared independence sits opposite the CCBB, a 1906 neoclassical bank turned into Rio's busiest exhibition space with a circular atrium, cinema and rooftop galleries across four floors.
Oscar Niemeyer's 1996 saucer on a cliff across the bay — a single 50m-diameter dish on a central column, reached by a red spiral ramp, with contemporary Brazilian works inside and a 360° window on Guanabara Bay.
A 1909 copy of the Paris Opéra with 2,357 seats, Carrara marble staircases, an onyx-and-crystal foyer and the Assyrian-themed Café do Teatro. Guided tours run Tue-Fri 11:00, 12:00, 14:00, 15:00 and Saturday mornings.
An 1887 Manueline-revival reading room with a three-storey iron bookcase holding 350,000 Portuguese volumes under a stained-glass skylight. Free entry Mon-Fri 09:00-18:00; a working library, so silence is enforced.
Santiago Calatrava's 2015 cantilevered structure on Píer Mauá, with solar spines that track the sun and a reflecting pool drawing bay water. Interactive exhibits on climate and anthropocene futures. Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00.
Two joined buildings on Praça Mauá — an eclectic 1918 palacete and a modernist bus terminal — linked by a wave-shaped concrete roof. The collection reads Rio through its own images: maps, favela photography, popular art.
The gutted mansion of heiress Laurinda Santos Lobo in Santa Teresa, rebuilt in 1997 as a steel-and-glass shell over brick ruins, with a stair tower over the rooftops of Centro. Free, Tue-Sun 08:00-18:00, with a small café.
A stone staircase carved into rock in Saúde, quilombo land and the birthplace of carioca samba — Donga and Pixinguinha played here. Roda de samba on Monday and Friday evenings; by day the Circuito Histórico plaques explain the site.
The 14 warehouse hangars in Gamboa where the top-league escolas build carnival floats year-round — welders, sculptors and costume ateliers at work. Visits run daily; the rehearsal quadras open at night in the pre-carnival season.
Jorge Selarón's 215 steps between Lapa and Santa Teresa, tiled over 23 years with more than 2,000 ceramics sent from 60 countries, the risers painted in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag. Free, open at all hours.