Copacabana

Copacabana is a four-kilometre arc on the Atlantic side of Rio de Janeiro, held between the Morro do Leme at the north end and the Forte de Copacabana at the south. It is one continuous beach with six lifeguard posts along it, and Cariocas navigate by those posts rather than by street names: each has its own crowd, and the differences between them are real and well understood locally.

Its fame is partly geography and partly the 1920s. The Copacabana Palace opened in 1923 and made the beach an international address; the black-and-white wave pattern of the promenade, laid in Portuguese stone and redesigned by Roberto Burle Marx in 1970, made it a graphic that people recognise without knowing what it is. Bossa nova, New Year's fireworks for two million people, and a century of photography did the rest.

The shore itself is wide, flat quartz sand with a steep drop at the waterline and a shore break that catches people out. The current runs parallel to the beach and can be strong. The sand was substantially widened by nourishment in the 1970s, which is why the promenade sits so far back from the water. There is no reef, no shelter and no shade of any kind.

Development is a city rather than a resort. Avenida Atlântica runs the whole length with hotels and apartment blocks behind it, and the beach operates as public infrastructure: kiosks every few hundred metres, chair and umbrella rental, football and footvolley courts, a bike lane, and a working population of vendors. It is busiest not in the afternoon but at six in the morning and again at sunset, when the neighbourhood exercises.

Copacabana is not a beautiful beach and has never needed to be. It is four kilometres of public space in a city that uses it constantly — football, volleyball, New Year, protest, the promenade that Burle Marx drew — and its interest is entirely in that use. Swimmers should read the flags, because the shore break is real and the rescue count is high.