Mureta da Urca

This guide to Mureta da Urca in Rio de Janeiro follows a Guanabara Bay bar founded by German immigrants in 1939, and how Brazil's 1942 declaration of war on Germany pushed it through a string of owners. It traces how a shuttered upstairs dining room sent customers across the street to sit on the sea wall instead, and the decades of samba musicians, cinema-era performers, and regulars who claimed the spot afterward, including how the wall earned its nickname, pobreta. Best heard with a cold beer, facing Sugarloaf.