Praça Mauá
Historic port-district plaza rebuilt by demolishing an elevated highway with a single explosive blast.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Praca Maua in Rio de Janeiro opens with the exact moment in April 2014 when 250 kilograms of explosives brought down a slab of the elevated Perimetral highway that had shadowed this port-district square for four decades. It traces how the demolition and everything that followed were financed: a 2011 auction of over six million building-rights certificates, bought almost entirely by a fund investing ordinary Brazilians' mandatory severance savings. The square is named for the Viscount of Maua, the nineteenth-century railway and banking tycoon whose bronze statue stands at its center facing the water.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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