Things to do
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Brasília Palace Hotel
Niemeyer's hotel on the lake shore, opened by Kubitschek in June 1958 and among the first buildings finished in the new capital. It burned in 1978, stood ruined for decades and reopened restored, with two Athos Bulcão works still in place.
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Catedral Metropolitana
Sixteen concrete ribs meeting in a crown, consecrated in 1970, entered down a dark ramp so that the glass and the three suspended angels arrive at once. Marianne Peretti made the windows, Alfredo Ceschiatti the angels.
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Praça dos Três Poderes
The plaza where Lúcio Costa set the executive, the legislature and the supreme court at the three points of a triangle, with Bruno Giorgi's bronze Candangos standing in the middle of it. The Panteão da Pátria closes the eastern side.
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Lago Paranoá
The reservoir dammed in 1959 to raise the humidity of a capital built on dry savanna, and now the water the city sails, swims and paddles on. The small Ermida Dom Bosco chapel on the far shore is the usual place to watch the sun go down.
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Memorial JK
Juscelino Kubitschek lies here under a chamber lit by Marianne Peretti's glass, beneath a statue of himself raised on a curved concrete stand. The museum below keeps the drawings, the cars and the plans for a capital built in a thousand days.
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Palácio do Congresso Nacional
Two towers between a dome and an open bowl, which is the constitution read in one glance: the cupola covers the Senate, the dish the Chamber of Deputies. Free guided tours run through the chambers and out onto the roof terrace.
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Palácio do Planalto
The president's working palace of 1960, carried on the tapered columns Niemeyer used to make concrete look as though it barely touches the ground. Public guided visits run on Sunday mornings when the building is empty.
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Park
Parque Nacional
Forty two thousand hectares of cerrado on the northwestern edge of the city, created in 1961 and holding maned wolves, giant anteaters and the springs that feed part of the capital's water. Two of those springs are open pools for swimming.
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Ponte Juscelino Kubitschek
Three steel arches that cross the lake diagonally in alternating directions rather than standing in a row, opened in 2002 to a design by Alexandre Chan. It is best seen from the shore at either end, and it is lit after dark.
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Santuário Dom Bosco
Eighty concrete columns sixteen metres high, with Hubert Van Doorne's Murano glass in twelve shades of blue filling everything between them, so the interior sits underwater in daylight. The chandelier holds 7,400 pieces of glass.
