2025 Christ the Redeemer Rio de Janeiro

The first stop on my second day in Rio was Christ the Redeemer. For the next two days I hired a local tour guide, Gus, to show me around. Some one I would definitely recommend.

Christ the Redeemer can be seen from most points in Rio, doing his job and making sure that we are all behaving.. Well trying to make sure we are.

Statue Details

And now for more of my useless trivia.

The statue was designed by Paul Landowski and built Heitor da Silva Costa and Albert Caquot. The face was sculpted by Gheorghe Leonida.

Christ the Redeemer was built between 1922 and 1931. It is 38 meters (124ft) high and has an arm span of 28 meters (92ft), weighing in at 635 tonnes. The statue is located in the Tijuca National park on top of Corcovado.

The statue is the largest art deco statue in the world. It was originally meant to be a statue of Princess Isabel, but they couldn’t get the funds to build it. The idea was abandoned when Brazil became a republic in 1889.

1920 it was decided that Rio was becoming less god faring so they needed to do something about it. What better way to motivate the people to mend their ways than a giant statue of Jesus looking over the city. The funds were raised via donations, this time they got the money. It cost about USD250K (USD4.4M in today’s money).

On 7 July 2007 Christ the Redeemer was voted as on of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Chapel

The chapel in the base of the statue was consecrated in 2006.

Getting to Christ the Redeemer

To get up to the statue you can catch the train, walk or drive up. We took the train, which leaves every 20 mins and don’t forget to get a ticket.

If you want to walk it will take a bit of time as you need to climb up about 3800m to get to where the train stops. The train itself takes about 20 mins each way.

Having a guide like Gus helps you get to the front of the queue as he knows everyone!

Christ the Redeemer

The View – Spectacular!

Christ the Redeemer

This is a must in Rio, which may sound like superfluous statement, but some people don’t seem to want to take the time to check it out. Get there as early as you can to beat the crowd and try to get a seat by the window on the right side of the train so you can see the view.

I was lucky that I visited on the day I did as the following day there were power outages that halted the train twice.