Private Custom Full-Day Highlights of Rio de Janeiro

Overview

A fully customizable full-day private tour visiting the landmarks you choose most, from Christ the Redeemer to Sugarloaf Mountain and the city's famous beaches.

This tour is exclusively for your own group, with a private car and driver-guide for the full day. You choose which landmarks to prioritize and how long to spend at each, with your guide sharing local history, food, and culture along the way. Admission tickets to attractions are at your own expense unless noted.

Highlights

• Christ the Redeemer Visit the iconic statue atop Corcovado Mountain for panoramic views over the city.
• Sugarloaf Mountain Choose to ride the cable car up Pão de Açúcar for sweeping views of Guanabara Bay.
• Selarón Steps Stop at the colorful mosaic staircase connecting Lapa and Santa Teresa.
• City beaches Drive along Copacabana and Ipanema for a look at Rio's famous shoreline.

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 fully customizable full-day private tour visiting the landmarks you choose most, from Christ the Redeemer to Sugarloaf Mountain and the city's famous beaches. This tour is exclusively for your own group, with a private car and driver-guide for the full day. You choose which landmarks to prioritize and how long to spend at each, with your guide sharing local history, food, and culture along the way. Admission tickets to attractions are at your own expense unless noted.

Christ the Redeemer took nine years to build — construction began in 1922 and the statue was officially unveiled on October 12, 1931. It's an Art Deco work designed by French sculptor Paul Landowski, with Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa overseeing construction alongside French structural engineer Albert Caquot, who proposed building the cross-shaped statue in reinforced concrete rather than steel. The outer layers are soapstone, chosen for how well it weathers and takes a smooth finish. The statue itself stands about 30 meters (98 feet) tall, with arms stretching roughly 28 meters (92 feet) wide, set on an 8-meter pedestal atop Corcovado Mountain, around 700 meters above the city.

Sugarloaf Mountain's cable car, the Bondinho Pão de Açúcar, has carried passengers over Guanabara Bay since October 27, 1912 — at the time, only the third cable car system of its kind operating anywhere in the world. Today's cars, each holding around 65 people, cover the route in two stages via the midway stop at Morro da Urca.

The Selarón Steps connect the Lapa and Santa Teresa neighborhoods, and their mosaic transformation was entirely the work of one man. Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón began tiling the 215-step staircase in 1990, calling it "my tribute to the Brazilian people," and kept adding to it for over two decades using tiles he bought, found, or received as gifts from visitors — by the time of his death in January 2013, pieces from more than 60 countries had gone into the work. He was found on the steps he'd spent years transforming; the exact circumstances of his death were never fully resolved.

Because this is a full-day, fully customizable tour, your guide can also build in time along Copacabana and Ipanema, Rio's most famous stretches of sand, with the twin granite peaks of Dois Irmãos (Two Brothers) — rising about 533 meters above the western end of Ipanema — visible along the shoreline drive.