The Cidade Maravilhosa, or “Marvellous City” as Rio is often called, has always been a city of enormous contrasts in terms of its population. Since the days when royalty and slaves rubbed shoulders, to now, when those from the favelas – Rio’s shantytowns – head to the city’s glamorous beaches to seek the upper classes and foreign tourists in overpriced hotels, bars and restaurants to scrape together enough coins to feed their families.

(This article was written for Anadolu Agency – a link to the original post can be found here.)

In Rio, a street is sometimes all that separates the most expensive real estate in Latin America from slums home to the most deprived communities on the continent.

Since the mid-19th Century, the city’s favelas grew massively, many of them into the steep slopes of Rio’s countless hills.

Brazil’s last census revealed that the country now has…