Nature Tours – Tour “Rio Gardens”: Tijuca Forest, Botanical Garden and Lage Park
A 6-hour tour through the most beautiful gardens of the Wonderful City: the Tijuca Forest, which surrounds Christ the Redeemer, the Botanical Garden, and its paths through majestic trails and the charming Lage Park with its view of the Christ.
Tijuca Forest: Located in the heart of Rio de Janeiro with easy access from anywhere in the city, this park protects the largest urban jungle in the world, with an area of 3,953 hectares. It is the most visited National Park in Brazil, receiving more than three million visitors per year, among Brazilians and foreigners of all ages. Undoubtedly, a green lung of Rio that attracts those who seek landscapes of jungle near the sea, bird watchers, lovers of walks, or simply those who long for contact with nature.
Botanical Garden: The Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro was created by Dom João VI, and its beauty has resisted 200 years with an imitation of palm trees, a lake with huge irupés, an orchid nursery and another one of bromeliads. This garden is built by the fascination that the Monarch Dom João VI had for the Brazilian botany and especially its trees and palm trees. It was also temporarily the location of a gunpowder factory that supplied the armies of the Brazilian Empire.
The Lage Park: This large Rio park, located next to the Botanical Garden and forming part of the extensive Tijuca forest, dates back to the 16th century as a rural property of the then governor of Rio de Janeiro. In that place operated a Engenho (sugar cane mill) that latter became a garden for walks to the Rio de Janeiro aristocracy of the XIX century, and only in the middle of XX century it opened its doors as a public park to all visitors. This unique place in Rio is characterized by beautifully designed geometric front gardens, in contrast with the lush jungle side gardens around a Roman-style palace where Rio’s fine arts school now operates. The gardens and their paths take visitors on a journey through this lovely refuge of the Wonderful City.