Foundations

Favelas in Rio de Janeiro

Rio is where the word favela was born and where favelas are most visible, perched on hillsides above the city's richest neighborhoods. A guide to the city's favelas by zone and by era.

Why Rio's favelas are so visible

In most Brazilian cities, favelas grew on the periphery. In Rio they grew in the middle of the city, because the city's mountainous topography left steep slopes that formal developers avoided, often right next to the jobs that migrants came for. The result is the image that defines favelas worldwide: brick houses climbing a hill above Copacabana, Leblon, or Botafogo. The image is real but partial. The largest absolute favela population in Brazil is in São Paulo, and the fastest growth in recent decades has been in the North; see Where are the favelas?

Favelas by zone

Centro and the port

The oldest favelas are here. Morro da Providência, behind the Central do Brasil station, gave the word favela its urban meaning. Other hills around the port were settled in the same period by dockworkers and the descendants of enslaved people. The 2010s Porto Maravilha redevelopment brought a cable car to Providência and contested removals.

South Zone

The South Zone favelas sit on the hills between the beach neighborhoods: Rocinha between Gávea and São Conrado, Vidigal above Leblon, Santa Marta above Botafogo, and Cantagalo, Pavão-Pavãozinho, Babilônia and Chapéu Mangueira around Copacabana and Ipanema. Their proximity to wealth gives them developed rental markets and, since the 2010s, tourism and gentrification pressures; see Favela tourism.

North Zone

The North Zone holds most of Rio's large favela complexes, many of them formed around the industrial corridors of the mid-twentieth century: Maré on reclaimed land beside Guanabara Bay and the Avenida Brasil, Alemão and Penha on the hills further north, Jacarezinho along the railway, and Mangueira beside the Maracanã stadium. The North Zone has been the main theater of large police operations, including the October 2025 operation in Penha and Alemão.

West Zone

The West Zone grew later and flatter. Cidade de Deus began as a 1960s public housing project for families removed from the South Zone. Rio das Pedras and Muzema in Jacarepaguá grew rapidly from the 1970s. Much of the West Zone is now dominated by militias rather than drug factions.

A short history

• 1890s–1930s: origins. After the abolition of slavery (1888) and the demolition of central tenements (cortiços) in the early twentieth-century reforms, the poor moved up the hills. Samba took shape in these communities; see Samba and favelas.
• 1940s–1950s: growth. Migration from the Northeast and from rural Rio state accelerated; favelas spread to the North Zone and the industrial suburbs.
• 1960s–1970s: removals. Governments of the state of Guanabara and the military regime removed tens of thousands of residents from South Zone favelas to distant housing projects such as Cidade de Deus and Vila Kennedy. See Removals and forced evictions.
• 1980s–1990s: recognition and factions. Re-democratization ended mass removals; at the same time the cocaine trade and armed factions took hold. In 1994 the city launched Favela-Bairro to upgrade rather than remove.
• 2000s–2010s: mega-events. Federal PAC investment, the UPP "pacification" program from 2008, and the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics brought cable cars, police occupations, and a new wave of removals.
• 2017–present: after the UPPs. The state's fiscal crisis hollowed out the UPPs; militias expanded in the West Zone; the Supreme Court restricted police operations under ADPF 635 (2020–2025); and the October 2025 Penha and Alemão operation became the deadliest in Brazil's history. See Public security history.

Visiting and studying Rio's favelas

Several Rio favelas host museums, cultural centers, and resident-run tours, among them the Museu da Maré and the Museu de Favela in Cantagalo and Pavão-Pavãozinho. Local organizations — Redes da Maré, Observatório de Favelas, Voz das Comunidades, Data_Labe — publish research and journalism from inside the communities; see Organizations and Data sources.