I went up to Santa Teresa today, on foot. I had stopped a cab and told him I wanted to go to the museum on top, but he refused with the word ‘mais alta’ or something. Ok, so it wasn’t raining yet, so I walked. Quite steep. I realised I was nearly there when I was on top of the Lapa stairs the other day. Fun to learn how the city connects.

My guidebook is quite short on recommendations, two, three maximum per neighborhood, and Santa Teresa only had its museum and the tram mentioned…

But I discovered one of the best views in Rio, after the Christ and the Sugar Loaf, for sure, but nonetheless noteworthy.

The Parque das Ruínas sits on the very top of Santa Teresa. It’s the restored ruins of the mansion of a Rio socialite at the end of the 19th century, who was famous for her cultural salons, with tout Rio showing up, and a couple of international celebrities thrown in.

She sure had a view up there… Santa Teresa and over to Christ the Redeemer, a view on Botafogo and the Sugar Loaf, the bay, Niteroí, downtown, and all around.

It wasn’t explained what happened to her or the house, but at one point the ruins were restored and made accessible again, basically for the view, and cultural events that are hosted there again, just as in old times.

Next to it, the reason why I actually came up here, the Museu da Chácara do Céu with its small collection that included drawings by Picasso, among others. Don’t expect too much: unfortunately, some of the museum’s most valuable pieces were stolen during a robbery in 2006 and never recovered.

However, they had an interesting collection of paintings from early Rio de Janeiro, the beach in Botafogo with only a few houses, a view ‘downtown’ when Rio was just a small city, oh so long ago.