The Mureta
Sunset over the bay.
TMbux — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Rodrigo Soldon from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — CC BY 2.0 · Surance — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Hiroki Ogawa — CC BY 3.0
Urca is a quiet residential district of nearly 7,000 people squeezed between Sugarloaf Mountain and Guanabara Bay, and it feels like a village inside the big city. Most of its houses date from the 1920s, when part of the bay was filled in and the first homes went up in 1922, but its roots are far older: at the São João fort on its tip, Estácio de Sá founded Rio's first Portuguese settlement on 1 March 1565, and Rua São Sebastião has a claim to be the city's oldest street. The pleasures are simple: walking the «Mureta», the long sea wall where locals sit on the edge at sunset with a juice, watching the moored boats and Christ the Redeemer on the skyline. The district also holds the old 1920s Urca casino building, the cable-car station for Sugarloaf, and the Cláudio Coutinho path that runs between rock and sea. Urca is one of Rio's safest districts, and its tree-shaded streets make a good walk before or after going up Sugarloaf.
Sunset over the bay.
Between rock and sea.
A 1920s building.
Urca district at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain, Rio de Janeiro
Walk the Mureta sea wall at sunset and the Cláudio Coutinho path, then ride up Sugarloaf from the cable-car station in the district.
