Sugarloaf Mountain

A rounded granite peak at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, reached by a famous cable car.

A famous cable car carries visitors to the top in two stages. From the summit you can see Copacabana beach, the city and the sea, with the Christ the Redeemer statue on a nearby mountain. It is part of a World Heritage Site declared by UNESCO in 2012.

A rock, not a volcano

Sugarloaf is one of several huge granite and quartz mountains that rise straight from the water's edge around Rio. Geologists call this kind of steep-sided outcrop a bornhardt. The mountain is protected as the Sugarloaf Mountain and Urca Hill Natural Monument, created in 2006. It is also a rock-climbing playground: with its neighbours Morro da Babilônia and Morro da Urca it has more than 270 routes, among the largest urban climbing areas in the world.

The cable car

Engineer Augusto Ferreira Ramos had the idea in 1907 of linking the hills through the air, and the cableway opened in 1912, the first in Brazil and the third of its kind in the world. The parts were carried up the mountains by hand or lifted by steel cables. Today passengers ride two glass-walled cable cars: first to Morro da Urca, 220 m high, then up to Sugarloaf. The ride takes about three minutes. The line has been rebuilt twice, in the 1970s and in 2008.

Where does the name come from?

In the 16th century, Brazil was a centre of the sugarcane trade. Sugar was packed into cone-shaped clay moulds to make firm loaves for shipping, and the peak reminded the Portuguese of that shape. The word has since been used for similar rounded peaks elsewhere. In Portuguese the mountain is called Pão de Açúcar.

On the globe

The model shows a round granite dome with the cable car line. Look for the cable running up to the top.