Sambódromo Marquês de Sapucaí

This guide to the Sambodromo Marques de Sapucai in Rio de Janeiro starts on a late-1983 deadline: Governor Leonel Brizola's promise of a permanent Carnival home, and architect Oscar Niemeyer, freshly back from exile, racing to design a seven-hundred-meter concrete runway with anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro. It follows the crews pouring concrete through the night and the rushed 1984 opening, when the first parade spilled across two evenings. Listen for how the arch of the Praca da Apoteose closes the runway, and how close a championship can turn on a single dropped drumbeat.