Cidade maravilhosa - a wonderful city. This is the world's dream of the metropolis by the Sugarloaf Mountain. Truly, its location on Guanabara Bay is breathtaking, the joie de vivre of its people, the Cariocas, infectious, its enthusiasm for football legendary. This book takes you to 111 places that the locals love and find special. Meet an artist who paints like van Gogh and is passionate about showing visitors around his district. Go up to a little church at the summit of the city's first favela, where a charming woman from northern Brazil keeps watch. See how 200,000 believers honour St George at four o'clock in the morning. Discover the strange, surprising and enchanting aspects of the world's most beautiful city.

Beate C. Kirchner, born in Munich in 1960, studied political sciences in Florence and Munich and worked for many years as a senior editor on German consumer magazines. Today she works as a freelance journalist and author. She travelled to Brazil for the first time during her student years and lives in her adopted home for several months every year.