Top Things to Do in Brazil
15 must-see attractions and experiences
Brazil can't be summed up. One city — São Paulo — hosts more Japanese descendants than anywhere outside Japan. The Amazon basin shelters roughly ten percent of all species on Earth. The Atlantic coastline runs 7,400 kilometers past beaches so varied no two look alike. Come expecting a single coherent travel experience and you'll miss the point. Brazil is a continent-sized anthology of places, each with its own cuisine, accent, and tempo. What binds them is appetite for public life. Brazilians eat, argue, worship, and celebrate with a collective intensity that turns a Tuesday market into an occasion. Parks fill on weekday mornings. Church squares become theaters. Performance and ordinary behavior blur — in the best way. Travelers who linger at a stall or show up for a Sunday crowd will see a Brazil no itinerary can schedule. First-timers need three facts. Portuguese is the language — Spanish helps, but a few phrases of Brazilian Portuguese earn goodwill that transcends words. Internal distances are enormous — flying between cities is routine and often cheaper than you'd expect. Brazil rewards patience and flexibility more than clockwork planning. Traffic, weather, and the national philosophy of jeitinho (finding a way around obstacles) mean the day rarely goes as plotted, and usually ends up better for it.
Don't Miss These
Our top picks for visitors to Brazil
Ibirapuera Park
Natural WondersOscar Niemeyer helped design it. The city opened it in 1954 for São Paulo's 400th anniversary. Ibirapuera is the civic heart of South America's largest city — a 1.6-square-kilometer green lung where joggers, skateboarders, families, and office workers share space in choreographed informality. Inside: a planetarium, four museums, a Japanese pavilion, an open-air auditorium, and shaded paths enough for an entire day without retracing a step. On Sunday mornings the perimeter road closes to cars and becomes a slow river of cyclists and pedestrians — São Paulo at its most relaxed.
Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/n - Vila Mariana, São Paulo - SP, 04094-050, Brazil · View on Map
Santuário Nacional de Nossa Senhora Aparecida
Cultural ExperiencesThe Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in the city of Aparecida, São Paulo state, is the second-largest Catholic church in the world by capacity — on feast days its attendance rivals the Vatican's. The story starts in 1717 when fishermen pulled a small terra-cotta Virgin Mary from the Paraíba River. The statue sparked one of the most fervent Marian devotions in the Americas. The modern basilica, completed in 1980, holds 45,000 worshippers inside; the exterior esplanade holds hundreds of thousands more during the October 12 feast, when pilgrims walk from cities hundreds of kilometers away.
Av. Dr. Júlio Prestes, s/n - Ponte Alta, Aparecida - SP, 12575-068, Brazil · View on Map
Beto Carrero World
EntertainmentIn Penha, Santa Catarina, along Brazil's southern coast, Beto Carrero World is Latin America's largest theme park. It covers 1.5 million square meters across Wild West, Far East, and children's zones. The park began as a wildlife and stunt show, then added full-scale thrill rides — steel coasters of international caliber — while keeping an animal park with elephants, big cats, and exotic birds. The mix makes it interesting even for adults who normally skip theme parks.
Rod. Beto Carrero World - Armação, Penha - SC, 88385-000, Brazil · View on Map
Mercado Municipal de São Paulo
Markets & ShoppingThe Mercado Municipal de São Paulo — the Mercadão — opened in 1933 inside an eclectic building whose 72 stained-glass windows depict the city's agricultural and immigrant past. The ground floor is a produce cathedral: bacalhau, Brazilian cheeses, spices, exotic fruits, meats you'll never find in a supermarket. The upper mezzanine is where locals and tourists converge over two legendary dishes: the mortadella sandwich (a skyscraper of Italian cold cut between soft bread) and the pastel de bacalhau, a fried salt-cod pastry perfected by Japanese-Brazilian vendors over three generations.
R. da Cantareira, 306 - Centro Histórico de São Paulo, São Paulo - SP, 01024-900, Brazil · View on Map
Mercado Central de Belo Horizonte
Markets & ShoppingBelo Horizonte's Mercado Central has run continuously since 1929 and now packs over 400 stalls into a single covered block — one of Brazil's most densely social commercial spaces. This is not a gourmet market or a tourist attraction; it is where BH residents shop, gossip, and eat breakfast. The cachaça section alone stocks over 1,000 labels from Minas Gerais producers, many unavailable elsewhere. Cheese stalls display wheels of artisanal Minas cheeses — now recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage — at prices that will embarrass anything you paid for imported cheese back home.
Av. Augusto de Lima, 744 - Centro, Belo Horizonte - MG, 30190-922, Brazil · View on Map
Jardim Botânico Municipal de Curitiba
Natural WondersCuritiba's Botanical Garden is Brazil's most photographed green space — the Art Nouveau greenhouse frames formal French gardens so precise they look like architectural renderings. The iron-and-glass structure, inspired by London's Crystal Palace, rises at the end of a central axis flanked by geometric flower beds replanted each season. Beyond the postcard centerpiece, 27 hectares hold a native forest trail, a Japanese garden, and a solar greenhouse for carnivorous plants. The garden is free, open daily, and sits at the end of a straight line from Curitiba's tube-bus network — itself urban design worth studying.
R. Engo. Ostoja Roguski, 350 - Jardim Botânico, Curitiba - PR, 82590-300, Brazil · View on Map
Christ the Redeemer
Notable AttractionsThe 38-meter Art Deco Christ the Redeemer stands 710 meters above sea level on Corcovado in the Tijuca Forest, arms spread over Rio de Janeiro with a serenity the chaos below only sharpens. Completed in 1931 and engineered by Heitor da Silva Costa with sculpture by French artist Paul Landowski, the statue doubles as a radio tower — its hollow concrete torso once housed telecommunications gear. Clear days give views from Maracanã stadium to Sugar Loaf to Guanabara Bay; cloudy days bring the statue emerging from mist at close range, still arresting despite every photograph you've seen.
Parque Nacional da Tijuca - Alto da Boa Vista, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 22261, Brazil · View on Map
Museum of Art of São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand
Museums & GalleriesMASP — the Museum of Art of São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand — floats a glass and concrete block on two massive red piers above Avenida Paulista. The space beneath has become one of the city's defining gathering points. Curator Pietro Maria Bardi built the permanent collection from 1947 onward: Raphael, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Van Gogh sit beside Brazilian modernists. All hang on transparent crystal easels that let you see both sides — a curatorial invention still radical decades later.
Av. Paulista, 1578 - Bela Vista, São Paulo - SP, 01310-200, Brazil · View on Map
Museu do Amanhã
Museums & GalleriesThe Museum of Tomorrow, designed by Santiago Calatrava and opened in 2015 on Pier Mauá in Rio's revitalized port, is among the most ambitious science museums built anywhere in the past twenty years. Its exterior — a spine of moving solar panels tracking the sun, cantilevered over Guanabara Bay — justifies the trip. Inside, five large questions about humanity and the planet develop through immersive installations using climate science, evolutionary biology, cosmology, and social data. This is not a display-case museum; you walk through projections, soundscapes, and interactive environments meant to provoke rather than inform.
Praça Mauá, 1 - Centro, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 20081-240, Brazil · View on Map
Zoológico de São Paulo
Family AttractionsFounded in 1958 in the city's southern zone, the São Paulo Zoo is among Latin America's largest by area and variety — over 3,200 animals across 220 species, including jaguars, giant anteaters, tapirs, and maned wolves many Brazilians have never seen outside these grounds. The zoo sits inside the Parque Estadual das Fontes do Ipiranga, a protected Atlantic Forest remnant. Some trees are old-growth and wild birds move freely through the grounds. The adjacent Jardim Zoológico metro station makes it the most accessible major attraction in São Paulo's outer districts.
Av. Miguel Estefno, 4241 - Água Funda, São Paulo - SP, 04301-905, Brazil · View on Map
Notable Attractions
Escadaria Selarón
Notable AttractionsThe Selarón Steps are a 215-step mosaic staircase linking Lapa and Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro, entirely covered in ceramic tiles from over 60 countries. Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón began tiling the crumbling public staircase outside his home in 1990 and continued, obsessively, until his death in 2013. Beyond the visual impact lies the process: Selarón invited visitors to leave tiles from their home countries, integrated hundreds of donations, and rearranged the design as new pieces arrived. The result is less a fixed artwork than a 23-year ceramic conversation.
R. Manuel Carneiro - Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 20241-120, Brazil · View on Map
Entertainment
Hot Park
EntertainmentHot Park in Rio Quente, Goiás, is built around natural thermal springs of the Quente River, whose waters hold 37–42°C year-round — warm enough to swim in any season without added heat. The park's pools, slides, and lazy rivers are fed directly from these springs, giving the experience a geological legitimacy most water parks cannot claim. The surrounding Caldas Novas region is Brazil's main thermal resort area, and Rio Quente Resorts (with Hot Park as centerpiece) is a self-contained destination with lodging, restaurants, and evening entertainment.
Rua Particular, sem número Esplanada - Esplanada do Rio Quente, Rio Quente - GO, 75667-000, Brazil · View on Map
Museums & Galleries
Museu Náutico da Bahia - Farol da Barra
Museums & GalleriesThe Nautical Museum of Bahia sits inside the base of the Farol da Barra lighthouse at the entrance to the Bay of All Saints in Salvador — simultaneously the oldest lighthouse in the Americas (built 1536, rebuilt 1698) and one of Brazil's most dramatically placed museums. The collection covers four centuries of Portuguese maritime activity in the South Atlantic: navigational instruments, charts, cannons, ship models, artifacts from colonial wrecks. Above the museum, the lighthouse still works; the view from its gallery at sunset, back across Baía de Todos os Santos toward the Pelourinho skyline, is among Brazil's great prospects.
Largo do Farol da Barra, S/N - Barra, Salvador - BA, 40140-650, Brazil · View on Map
Family Attractions
Parque das Aves
Family AttractionsThe Bird Park in Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, houses over 1,500 birds across 150 species inside vast netted tunnels. Macaws, toucans, parrots, and flamingos fly at eye level as you walk through. The 16-hectare reserve of Atlantic Forest sits next to the Brazilian side of Iguaçu National Park, giving rescued and rehabilitated birds — several threatened by the same deforestation the park was created to stop — habitat close to their natural range. Close-range encounters with free-flying scarlet macaws cannot be reproduced elsewhere.
Av. das Cataratas, 12450 - KM 17,1 - Parque Nacional, Foz do Iguaçu - PR, 85859-899, Brazil · View on Map
Natural Wonders
Iguaçu National Park
Natural WondersIguaçu Falls are not one waterfall. They are 275 separate cascades spread across 2.7 kilometers of basalt cliff where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet — a volcanic fissure split 130 million years ago. From Brazil you get a panoramic view of the entire arc; from Argentina you stand on catwalks directly above individual falls. Both perspectives are essential. The Brazilian park also protects Atlantic Forest where jaguars, giant otters, and tapirs live in one of South America's most biodiverse reserves.
State of Paraná, Brazil · View on Map
Planning Your Visit
Booking Advice
Brazil rewards patience and flexibility more than clockwork planning. Traffic, weather, and the national philosophy of jeitinho (finding a way around obstacles) mean the day rarely goes as plotted, and usually ends up better for it.
Local Etiquette
Portuguese is the language — Spanish helps, but a few phrases of Brazilian Portuguese earn goodwill that transcends words.
Book Your Experiences
Guided tours, tickets, and activities in Brazil