Rio de Janeiro
Posted by admin at Jun 17th, 2008 in Brazil, South America
Nearly five hundred years have seen RIO DE JANEIRO transformed from a fortified outpost on the rim of an unknown continent into one of the world's great cities. Its recorded past is tied exclusively to the legacy of the colonialism on which it was founded. No lasting vestige survives of the civilization of the Tamoios people, who inhabited the land before the Portuguese arrived, and the city's history effectively begins on January 1, 1502, when a Portuguese captain, André Gonçalves, steered his craft into Guanabara Bay, thinking he was heading into the mouth of a great river.
Christ the Redeemer (Portuguese: O Cristo Redentor), is a statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The statue stands 39.6 metres (130 feet) tall, weighs 700 tons, and is located at the peak of the 700-m (2296-foot) Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park overlooking the city.A symbol of Christianity, the statue has become an icon of Rio and Brazil.
Local engineer Heitor da Silva Costa designed the statue 