Download File - UNESCO World Heritage

Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
No 1100
1. BASIC DATA
State Party: Brazil
Name of property: Rio de Janeiro: Sugar Loaf, Tijuca
Forest and the Botanical Garden
Location: State and City of Rio de Janeiro
Date received: 29 February 2002
Category of property:
In terms of the categories of cultural property set out in
Article 1 of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, this is a
site. In terms of Operational Guidelines para. 39, it is also
be a cultural landscape.
[Note: This property is nominated as a mixed site, under the
natural and the cultural criteria. This evaluation will deal solely
with the cultural values, and the natural values will be covered in
the IUCN evaluation.]
Brief description:
The property consists of the Tijuca National Park and three
headlands, all within the City of Rio de Janeiro. It also
includes the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens, Corcovado,
with its statue of Christ, and Sugar Loaf as one of three
headlands dominating the Bay of Guanabara and the
approach to the City from the sea. The ensemble is much
prized for its recreational uses by residents and visitors,
and for its symbolic values by Brazilians.
2. THE PROPERTY
Description
The areas nominated forms the dramatic setting for Rio de
Janeiro and reflect the cultural relationship over time
between the forested landscape, the mountains, and the
city. The city is punctuated by a series of forested
mountains peaks that tower over the city and rise up to
1,021 m high. These include Sugar Loaf [Pao de Acucar],
Urca, Cara de Cao, Corcovado, and Tijuca, the latter two
being part of the Tijuca National Park.
The city is cradled between these mountains and
Guanabara Bay, creating an urban landscape setting of
outstanding beauty that has been shaped by significant
historical events, influenced by a diversity of cultures, and
celebrated in the arts, through painting and poetry in
particular. As noted in one of the background papers, this
landscape context of Rio illustrates ‘…the intricate
relationship between nature and society … the splendid
landscape of today incorporates so much human effort in
the past…’
The nomination includes three separate areas:
•= Tijuca National Park (3 sectors totalling
3,358 ha)
8
•= Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens Research
Institute (137 ha)
•= Sugar Loaf, Urca and Cara de Cao (105 ha)
Tijuca National Park includes a significant section of the
Atlantic Forest, some of which was reforested through
innovative restoration efforts in the mid 19 th century. The
park also contains important historical elements
representing the early history of coffee and sugar
plantations, as well as 19 th and early 20 th century park
development.
The three physically separate areas of the National Park are
essentially mountainous, afforested and uninhabited. They
are ‘green’ areas suspended above the city of Rio de
Janeiro that at one and the same time needs them to stay
green but presses to encroach upon them. The Forest of
Tijuca itself, occupying much of the southern part of
Sector A, occupies rugged terrain yet is littered with both
natural and artificial features – for example, waterfalls,
caves and lookouts on the one hand, grottoes, ruins and
fountains on the other – the whole accessible by carefullycontrived
roads and paths. It shares characteristics of
Romantic parks and gardens elsewhere, and is indeed
much influenced by European ideas. Sector B, made up
mainly of the Serra da Carioca and the Floresta da Gávea
Pequena is, in contrast, essentially wild (though the
vegetation is generally not indigenous). Access includes a
railway at its eastern end. Sector C has only one point of
vehicular access, a road on its north to a lookout. It is
otherwise almost completely undeveloped, though a
favourite recreational area.
Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens Research Institute
(137 ha), is an historic and renowned scientific institution.
It, includes a forest reserve (83 ha) and a formal garden
(54 ha), both are open to the public, and provides
educational programmes for all ages. The gardens include
an arboretum, with a large collection of Amazonian trees,
and internationally significant collections of several plant
families, particularly palms. It also includes a national
herbarium, a research library, and is the centre for an
ongoing research program on the Atlantic forest. The
botanical garden is adjacent to Tijuca National Park.
The Botanical Gardens are geographically coterminous
with the south east of National Park Sector B.
Topographically and functionally, they are divided
between mountainside to their west and formal gardens to
their east.
Sugar Loaf, Urca and Cara de Cao (105 ha) are a
dramatic series of isolated hills linked to the Tijuca massif.
The city of Rio de Janeiro was founded in 1565 at the base
of Sugar Loaf.
History
The histories of the six physically separate components of
the nominated property are fundamentally bound up with
the history of the city, but can be individually
distinguished at local level. For instance, the history of the
Botanical Gardens is different in detail from that of Tijuca
Forest.
The nomination provides no history of the area before
Europeans first saw Sugar Loaf mountain in 1502. The
first European settlement, Rio, was founded at the foot of