Copacabana Palace, A Belmond Hotel

Rio built the Copacabana Palace before it quite knew what it wanted to be, and then spent a century becoming the city the hotel had imagined. It went up in 1923, a great wedding cake of a building facing a beach that was still half wilderness, and within a decade it had gathered every visiting film star, deposed monarch and dance band in the hemisphere.

What is remarkable is how little of that has curdled into nostalgia. The Copa still functions as a working luxury hotel rather than a museum of one. Belmond has restored it carefully, resisting the temptation to modernise away the things that make it itself, and the result is a building that feels its age in the best possible way.

The Pool

You come for the pool, and you should. It is not the largest in Rio or the newest, but it is unquestionably the most consequential piece of water in Brazil. Politicians have been made and unmade around it. It has appeared in more films than most actors.

In practice it is simply a very good pool, generously proportioned, lined with proper loungers, and staffed by people who understand the difference between attentive and intrusive. Order a caipirinha and watch an entire social order arrange itself around the deep end.

Rooms and the Question of Which Side

The rooms are large and comfortably traditional, with parquet, high ceilings and the sort of proportions that stopped being built decades ago. The decision that matters is the view. Ocean-facing rooms look straight out over Copacabana beach, which is spectacular and, on carnival weekends, extremely loud.

Pool-side rooms are quieter and arguably more atmospheric, since you look down into the courtyard rather than out at the traffic on the Avenida. If you are here to sleep rather than to be photographed, take the pool.

Eating

Cipriani is the grand Italian restaurant and it is genuinely good, which is not always true of grand hotel restaurants with famous names. The Michelin attention it has attracted is deserved.

But the more useful meal is breakfast on the terrace, taken slowly, with the beach filling up in front of you and the mountains behind still holding cloud. It is the best introduction to Rio the city offers.

Read the renovation calendar before the room list

Copacabana Palace is in the middle of a consequential renewal. Belmond says the annex and main pool are undergoing work through parts of 2026, with the Pool Wing returning as a showcase for Brazilian designers and artisans; during the principal pool closure, residents are directed to a sixth-floor alternative. The main building continues to operate, but this is not a footnote when the half-Olympic pool is one of the hotel's signatures. Confirm the exact dates, construction outlook and available facilities in writing before paying a peak-season rate.

The current inventory is 140 rooms and suites, ranging from 26-square-metre rooms to vast signature accommodation. Ocean-facing rooms in the historic building deliver the striped promenade and Atlantic; inner views trade drama for calm. Pérgula serves Brazilian and Mediterranean food, MEE holds a Michelin star for pan-Asian cooking, and the hotel advertises two Michelin-starred restaurants overall. The spa and salon have also had temporary renovation closures, another reason to treat old reviews cautiously.

Security, beach access and transport are handled with the confidence expected of the address, but Rio is not best experienced through the hotel window. Use the private beach set-up, walk the promenade in daylight and allow generous time for trips to Ipanema, Santa Teresa and the mountains. The Copa is a grand social stage beside a democratic city beach; its magic lies in that friction, not in pretending the city has been kept outside.

The Verdict

A genuine grande dame that has managed the difficult trick of aging without becoming a period piece. If you are going to Rio once, stay here, take a room over the pool, and give yourself one entirely unstructured afternoon.