Alternative Viewpoints Private Tour

Overview

A private tour to four off-the-beaten-path viewpoints — Parque do Penhasco, the Chinese Pagoda, Mirante Dona Marta, and Parque das Ruínas — away from the crowds at Rio's main attractions.

This tour takes you to four admission-free vantage points, carefully chosen to give you real perspective on the city while staying away from the crowds at the main attractions. Perfect for travelers who love landscapes without long lines.

Highlights

• Parque do Penhasco A real cliffside viewpoint in São Conrado overlooking the coastline.
• Chinese Pagoda A pagoda-style lookout with sweeping views toward Ipanema and Leblon.
• Mirante Dona Marta A popular viewpoint above Botafogo, with views of Christ the Redeemer and the bay.
• Parque das Ruínas A restored ruin in Santa Teresa offering panoramic city views.

What Stops Does This Tour Make?

A popular starting point — every Voyzo itinerary is fully customizable, so we'll shape the order and stops around your group.

Important Information

Frequently Asked Questions

About This Tour

A private tour to four off-the-beaten-path viewpoints — Parque do Penhasco, the Chinese Pagoda, Mirante Dona Marta, and Parque das Ruínas — away from the crowds at Rio's main attractions. This tour takes you to four admission-free vantage points, carefully chosen to give you real perspective on the city while staying away from the crowds at the main attractions. Perfect for travelers who love landscapes without long lines.

Rio's two headline viewpoints — Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain — are unforgettable, but they're also two of the busiest attractions in South America, with ticketed access, queues, and shared vans or cable cars. This tour works a quieter angle: four real, free public lookouts scattered across the city that locals use far more often than visitors do, each with its own history rather than just a view.

Parque do Penhasco Dois Irmãos opened in 1992 on a cliffside above São Conrado and still flies under most tourists' radar. Its first and most dramatic lookout, Mirante do Penhasco, sits just behind a memorial to the victims of the 2009 Air France Flight 447 and looks straight down the coast across Leblon, Ipanema, and Arpoador — with Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon and the Botanical Garden visible inland. From there the route continues to Vista Chinesa, the pagoda-style gazebo at Alto da Boa Vista built between 1902 and 1906 under Mayor Pereira Passos. Despite looking like carved bamboo, the structure is actually reinforced concrete, cast and painted to mimic bamboo joints — a tribute to the Chinese tea growers Dom João VI brought to Rio in the early 1800s to try to establish a local tea industry around the Botanical Garden.

The tour then climbs to Mirante Dona Marta, a lookout about 360 meters up inside Tijuca National Park on the hill that divides Botafogo and Santa Teresa. It only opened to the public in the 1990s, and in 2007 Rio's mayor formally settled a long-running mix-up by decree: Dona Marta is the hill and its lookout, while the community below it is Santa Marta — two separate names people had used interchangeably for years. From up here, Sugarloaf, Christ the Redeemer, and Guanabara Bay line up in a single sweeping panorama. The final stop, Parque das Ruínas in Santa Teresa, is something else entirely: the shell of a grand mansion that once belonged to Belle Époque socialite Laurinda Santos Lobo, whose salons drew Rio's writers and artists until her death in 1946. The house sat empty for roughly 40 years before the city bought it in 1993, stabilized the ruins rather than rebuilding them, and reopened it in 1997 as a free cultural center with a rooftop terrace view over the bay.