Tour Rio 8 – Burle Marx and Jardim Botânico Duration: 8 hours

Depar­ture: 08:00am – This tour requires a 48hs pre-booking and is sub­ject to availability.

BURLE MAX

09:00 (2 hours) — Burle Max — Burle Marx, one of the most impor­tant land­scape artists of mod­ern times, bought the Santo Anto­nio da Bica State in Barra de Guarat­iba in 1949 to store his plant col­lec­tion. The state has a mar­velous house and a small chapel that dates back to the 16th cen­tury. Both build­ings were lov­ingly restored and Burle Marx lived there from 1973 until his death in 1994. In 1985, the prop­erty was donated to the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment in trust for pos­ter­ity and became a National Mon­u­ment. It is now called Sítio Roberto Burle Marx. In an area of approx­i­mately 100 acres, vis­i­tors can see more than 3,500 species of plants (many threat­ened with extinc­tion), an extra­or­di­nary col­lec­tion of reli­gious images and pot­tery, a fab­u­lous art col­lec­tion, a library with over 2,500 books and of course Burle Marx’s own paintings.

The city and peo­ple of Rio and all those who love nature and strug­gle to pre­serve it are heirs to Burle Marx’s legacy of ines­timable value.

12:00 (1 ½ hour) – Lunch – Satyri­con Restau­rant (Fine Ital­ian Cui­sine)  – Not included

JARDIM BOTÂNICO

13:45 — Jardim Botânico — Of all of Rio’s green city parks, this is per­haps the best and most ele­gant. Cre­ated by Dom João VI, Regent Prince at the time, to accli­ma­tize the spices Por­tu­gal used to import from the East Indies, in Octo­ber 11th 1808 the Gar­den became the Royal Hor­ti­cul­ture. The Gar­den only opened offi­cially after 1822

Among the first plants intro­duced in the Botan­i­cal Gar­den was a palm (Roy­s­tonea oler­acea), planted by the Regent Prince him­self. From that moment on, the tree has been com­monly known as the Royal or Impe­r­ial Palm. The palm planted by D.João was denom­i­nated Palma Mater.

The Botan­i­cal Gar­den is now a favorite relax­ation spot. The charm­ing mix of gar­dens, sculp­tures, ponds, foun­tains, trop­i­cal for­est and impe­r­ial palm boule­vards includes more than 6,000 inter­na­tional plant species spread over 338 acres. Every sea­son, nature pro­vides a show that shouldn’t be missed.