Christ the Redeemer

Where is Christ the Redeemer?

You will find it in Corcovado Mountain, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

22.9519° S, 43.2106° W

The story behind it

In the 1920s, a group of Catholics in Rio de Janeiro wanted a monument to celebrate 100 years of Brazil's independence and to watch over their city. French sculptor Paul Landowski designed the statue with Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, while French engineer Albert Caquot solved how to keep such a huge concrete figure standing safely on a mountaintop. Workers spent nine years building it on top of Corcovado mountain, finishing in 1931. The statue quickly became a symbol of Rio and of Brazil itself, appearing on postcards and in films for decades afterward. Today visitors ride a cogwheel train or a van up the steep mountainside, then climb steps or take an escalator to stand at the statue's feet, looking out over Rio's beaches, forests and famous Sugarloaf Mountain far below.

Find it on the globe

Christ the Redeemer is there as a little three-dimensional model of the building itself. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.

How was it built?

Engineers built a steel-reinforced concrete skeleton first, then covered the outside in thousands of small soapstone tiles, chosen because soapstone resists weather and doesn't reflect harsh sunlight. Workers carried materials up Corcovado mountain on a small railway, then hauled them the rest of the way by hand, since there were no cranes strong enough for the job. Romanian sculptor Gheorghe Leonida shaped the face separately. Building the statue and its pedestal took about nine years, finishing in 1931.