Praça da República - Campo de Santana
Romantic garden of artificial grottoes, imported iron statues, and iron bridges disguised as wood.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Praça da República - Campo de Santana in Rio de Janeiro opens with a fallen log holding up a bridge that rings like metal when you knock on it. It follows Auguste Glaziou, a self-taught French gardener whom Dom Pedro II put in charge of turning this swamp into an imperial garden starting in 1858, and the fake wilderness of grottoes, waterfalls, and rustic bridges he built here in the 1870s using ironwork shipped from a French foundry and sixty thousand plants hauled from the Tijuca forest. Look closely at the railings and statues around you for what else is not what it seems.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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