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Christ the Redeemer
Rio de Janeiro's Art Deco Christ, arms spread above the city from Corcovado
Seen from almost anywhere in Rio de Janeiro, the pale figure on the summit of Corcovado opens its arms over the city, the bay and the beaches below. Christ the Redeemer is a 30-meter statue of Jesus in reinforced concrete, set on an 8-meter pedestal and covered in thousands of small triangles of soapstone. Completed in 1931, it became the emblem of Rio and of Brazil, lit in national colors for celebrations and in the colors of other countries in solidarity after tragedies abroad. It is also an active Catholic sanctuary, with a small chapel in its base. In 2007 a global vote named it one of the New7Wonders, the youngest monument on the list by nearly three centuries.
Corcovado, the hunchback, is a granite peak about 710 meters high rising out of the Tijuca Forest, among the largest urban forests in the world and part of Tijuca National Park. From the platform at the statue's feet the view takes in Sugarloaf Mountain, Guanabara Bay, Copacabana, Ipanema, the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon and the Maracanã stadium. The statue's outstretched arms span 28 meters, and its head and hands were sculpted in sections and assembled on the mountain. Most visitors ride a cog railway, opened in 1884, that climbs through the forest, or arrive by van, then take escalators or stairs to the top. Lightning strikes the statue several times a year, and its fingers and head have needed repairs more than once.
A monument on Corcovado was first proposed in the 1850s, and the idea was revived around Brazil's independence centennial in 1922 by Catholic groups who raised money in parishes nationwide. The Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa planned and built it, the French sculptor Paul Landowski designed the figure, and the Romanian sculptor Gheorghe Leonida shaped the face. It was inaugurated on October 12, 1931. The statue stands on federal parkland managed by the environmental agency ICMBio, while the sanctuary belongs to the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro. It is part of the Carioca Landscapes World Heritage site, inscribed by UNESCO in 2012. The site averaged about 7,800 visitors a day in 2025, and an escalator replacement running from August 2026 to about May 2027 has halved its capacity.