Largo do Boticário

This guide to Largo do Boticário in Rio de Janeiro opens with an heiress named Sybil Bittencourt returning from Europe in the 1990s to find a stolen car stripped for parts beneath her family's ornate square. It traces the square back to the 1920s, when her ancestor, newspaper owner Edmundo Bittencourt, salvaged tiles, doors, and ironwork from condemned colonial buildings downtown to build his private fantasy of old Rio, including the Pineapple Mansion. It follows the square's decline into prostitution and squatting, and the city's repeated failed attempts to reclaim it.