Sugarloaf Cable Car, Rio de Janeiro
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
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