The bondinho over the bay – 1912’s glass beads strung Urca to Sugarloaf, the hemisphere’s first cableway and Rio’s sunset machine.
At a glance
- Type
- Aerial cableway
- Period
- 1912; cars renewed 1972, 2008
- Style
- Pioneering cable engineering
- Location
- Urca and Sugarloaf, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Coordinates
- -22.9519, -43.1631
- Engineer
- Augusto Ferreira Ramos
Overview
Engineer Augusto Ramos sold shares to Rio’s society for his 1912 audacity – the western hemisphere’s first aerial cableway, third on earth: two stages rising Praia Vermelha to Urca hill to the Pao de Acucar’s 396-metre granite egg, Guanabara’s theatre unrolling beneath the bondinho’s glass. The sunset run remains Rio’s essential machine-made miracle.
History
Original wooden cars served sixty years (one preserved aloft); Moonraker’s 1979 Jaws fight wrote Bond’s cable-bite legend. The 2008 bubbles tripled capacity for the millions; marmosets work the Urca terrace’s audience between climbs’ centuries-old routes on the bare rock.
Architecture and Design
Span engineering pioneered tensioned track cables’ standards; stations stack mid-century terraces over the granite. The summit’s helipad ring and trails frame Corcovado, Niteroi, and the bay’s carrier-deck panorama.
Cultural significance
The bondinho is Rio’s mechanical symbol – postcards’ second icon after the Christ – and cableway history’s working centenarian within the Carioca Landscapes UNESCO frame.
Visiting today
First cars beat queues and haze; sunset slots sell fast online. Urca’s wall at dusk – beer and the bay – extends the descent.
Getting there
Praia Vermelha’s base station sits minutes from Botafogo metro by bus or the shore walk.
Sources and resources
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photoIs this page about you?
This page is read by travellers and heritage enthusiasts who find it on Google. Tell us how you are connected to this place and we will take it from there.