Walking Through Santa Teresa at Dusk

Mosaic Steps and Cachaca Sunsets: Dusk in Santa Teresa

Santa Teresa sits on a hill above downtown Rio, connected to the city below by the bonde - the yellow streetcar that groans and clatters up the tracks on Rua Almirante Alexandrino with the patient determination of something that has been climbing this hill since 1877. I rode it up and stepped off into a neighborhood that felt like it had seceded from the rest of the city and established itself as an independent republic of art, crumbling plaster, and extremely good cachaca.

The streets are steep and cobblestoned, lined with colonial mansions in various states of repair - some restored to their nineteenth-century grandeur, others wearing their decay like a badge of character. Bougainvillea erupted from every wall and fence in fuchsia and orange, and the late afternoon light turned the painted facades into a warm palette of ochre, terracotta, and a faded blue that Brazilians call azul colonial.

I started at the Escadaria Selaron, the mosaic staircase created by Chilean artist Jorge Selaron, who spent twenty years covering 250 steps in tiles from sixty countries. The staircase is often crowded, but at five in the evening the day-trippers had thinned, and I climbed slowly, reading the tiles - messages, patterns, faces - each one placed by hand by a man who called this staircase his "tribute to the Brazilian people" and whose obsession is visible in every grout line.

Dinner was at Bar do Mineiro on Rua Paschoal Carlos Magno, a restaurant so thoroughly embedded in Santa Teresa's identity that removing it would change the neighborhood's DNA. The feijoada was served in a clay pot, thick with black beans and pork, accompanied by rice, farofa, and sliced orange. I ate on the veranda overlooking the rooftops, watching the sky turn from blue to amber to a deep violet that seemed to rise from the bay below like smoke. A parrot - wild, green, unconcerned - landed on the railing and eyed my farofa with professional interest.

After dinner, I walked downhill along Rua Dias de Barros, past galleries and ateliers where artists work with their doors open. Music leaked from somewhere - samba, acoustic, the kind that one guitar and one voice can make when both are good. The streetlamps cast circles of yellow on the cobblestones, and the shadows of the colonial buildings fell across the road like sleeping giants.

Santa Teresa is not easy - the hills are steep, the streets are uneven, and the neighborhood requires the kind of attention that all beautiful, complicated places demand. But at dusk, when the light goes soft and the city below dissolves into a glitter of windows and headlights, it becomes something close to perfect. I stood at a miradouro - a lookout point - on Rua Aprazivel and watched Rio light up, and I thought: this is why people climb hills.