The legend of Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro is a whale of a tale.
In 1858, word spread fast about two giant whales stuck in the shallows. When the news got to Brazil’s emperor, Pedro II, he had his horse-drawn carriages packed with camping gear and traveled to witness the spectacle. Arriving and finding no trace of the whales, he decided to stick around and throw a beach party with his royal entourage.
While this story is likely embellished, if true at all, Copacabana Beach is still known today as one of Brazil’s top balneários (resort towns), drawing millions from around the world each year with its golden sands and gentle waters. Its transformation from a quiet coastal inlet to a glamorous vacation spot (not to mention the namesake of one of New York’s swankiest mid-century nightclubs) is also a story best told through pictures.
Thousands of geolocated archival photographs from the Instituto Moreira Salles bring the entire city of Rio into focus on imagineRio, a digital atlas supported by the Getty Foundation. imagineRio provides a visual history of the city and a fuller picture of the social, political, and economic events that shaped it. Copacabana Beach is one of many places that illustrate the history of Rio as it became a modern metropolis.
Early Images of Copacabana Beach
Copacabana Beach was once called Sacopenapã, from the Tupi word socó, referring to a bird native to the area. The early photograph above does not suggest a tropical paradise, instead showing a rocky coastline with waves lapping close to rugged woodlands. In the early 19th century, the beach also had an active fishing community and small fortresses along the shore to ward off pirates.
Drawn to its presumed untouched beauty and remoteness, local and foreign travelers began flocking to the area in the late 1800s. The fishing villages that lined the coast were overtaken by the tourist industry, which would attract visitors and those looking to move farther from the city center. The photographs below show this explosive change in population—on the left is an image from 1900 of a Copacabana fishing community, and on the right is a Jorge Kfuri aerial view from 1921 of the beachfront. The latter picture shows hundreds of new homes and businesses lining Copacabana’s neatly gridded streets.
Early Tourism
To accommodate even more travelers, roads were built for beach access, along with a tram line from central Rio. Sanatoriums were built at the coast for patrons attracted to the supposed curing properties of fresh ocean air. Copacabana was even the location of the first successful telegraph cables that connected Brazil to Europe through the Brazilian Submarine Telegraph Company. But the building that sealed the deal for the beach as a premier getaway was the 1923 construction of Copacabana Palace Hotel. This photograph from 1930 shows the hotel’s signature art deco style, a popular look for seaside resorts during this time. A stereogram from that same year shows beachgoers surrounded by new buildings as they sunbathe.
A wide promenade was also built in 1919, bringing a modern sensibility to the city’s urban design. The promenade was paved with a wavy black-and-white pattern that he borrowed from a signature Portuguese geometric design, and today it remains an iconic element of the beach (so iconic that you can even order prints of the pattern online). The design was extended and renovated by famed landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx in the 1970s.
Using imagineRio, more is revealed about this early photo of a woman and child strolling the walkway, including the exact spot where the photographer shot it.
Copacabana’s broad beach wasn’t a natural phenomenon. The deceptively small strand of sand got overcrowded, and new buildings were also threatened by high tides and flooding. To tackle increasing demands, hydraulic engineer Hildebrando de Goes Filho created a landfill in the 1970s that extended the width of the beach and the promenade to accommodate more visitors and protect the surrounding structures. With those changes, the beach’s 20th-century transformation was complete.
Today, Copacabana Beach is as popular as ever and is used for large-scale celebrations. It holds the Guinness World Record for largest free concert attendance for a 1994 New Year’s Eve performance by Rod Stewart that attracted over 4.2 million people (though some question whether most were there just for the beach’s massive yearly fireworks display). Its exoticization in the 20th century has worn off, and it is now equal parts tourist spot and wealthy enclave. But it remains a symbol of Rio’s complex history and the early attempts to tame its famous coastline.
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