Samba City - Main Entrance

This guide to Samba City's main entrance in Rio opens with the fire that tore through the warehouse complex in the small hours of February 7, 2011, weeks before Carnival, destroying costumes and floats several samba schools had spent a year building. It steps back to the complex's 2006 opening as a permanent home for around fourteen of Rio's elite schools, and to the carnival designer the site was later renamed for. Critics once mocked him for piling on glitter and gold instead of quiet good taste.