Escadaria Selarón
Mosaic staircase of colorful tiles from sixty countries, built solo across two decades.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Escadaria Selarón in Rio de Janeiro follows the Chilean painter Jorge Selarón, who settled above this crumbling public stairway in the early 1980s and began covering its two hundred fifteen steps in broken tile without a permit, funding the work by selling copies of the same painting over and over. It traces how strangers around the world began mailing him tiles from home, and how the project consumed the next twenty-three years of his life.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Lapa
Bohemian nightlife district anchored by a tiled staircase one artist covered by hand over two decades.
Copacabana Beach
Sweeping stretch of sand backed by a hand-cut, wave-pattern stone promenade from a modernist master.
Kobra "Etnias" Mural
Giant portraits of five continents' indigenous peoples spanning an old dockside warehouse wall.
Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro
Basement hall in Assyrian and Persian style, once a cabaret and ballroom, now a theater cafe.
Largo do Boticário
Neocolonial mansions turned crime-ridden ruin, seized by the city and later restored.
Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Glória do Outeiro
Figure-eight baroque church of twin octagons, designed by a military engineer and lined with blue-and-white tile.