A valley between the hill and the river
Laranjeiras fills the valley of the Carioca River, which runs down from the slopes of Corcovado toward the sea. After the French were driven out in the 16th century, the land was divided into royal grants; over the following centuries came farms, orchards and country estates.
The name first appears in a document in 1780. Tradition says it comes from the orange trees (laranjeiras) that grew along the river — a story popularized by travelers such as the Englishwoman Maria Graham in 1821. Historians point out, however, that at the time there were far more coffee plants here than orange trees.
The princess’s palace
When the Portuguese court arrived in 1808, the estates in the valley became a favorite address of the nobility. The most famous was begun in 1853 by the Portuguese José Machado Coelho. Bought by the imperial family and remodeled, in 1865 it became the home of Princess Isabel and her husband, the Count d’Eu — the Paço Isabel.
After the Republic was proclaimed in 1889, the palace was confiscated by the state. President Getúlio Vargas lived there during the Estado Novo and withstood an Integralist attack on it in 1938. Since 1960 it has been a seat of government — first of Guanabara State, then of Rio de Janeiro State. Today it is known as Guanabara Palace.
The Guinles, a palace and a park
Between 1909 and 1914, businessman Eduardo Guinle built Laranjeiras Palace on the hillside, designed by Armando Carlos da Silva Telles and filled with marble, mosaics and paintings by Frans Post. It passed to the federal government in the 1940s, served as a presidential residence and is now the official residence of Rio’s governor.
The family’s former gardens, designed by French landscape architect Gérard Cochet, became Parque Guinle. Between 1948 and 1954, Lúcio Costa designed three apartment buildings there that anticipated the “superblocks” of Brasília — they won a prize at the first São Paulo Biennial, in 1951.
Cradle of Brazilian football
On Fluminense’s ground, next to Guanabara Palace, Brazil’s national team played its very first match: on July 21, 1914, it beat England’s Exeter City 2–0.
In 1919 the stadium was rebuilt for the South American Championship — and it was here in Laranjeiras that Brazil won its first international title. Three years later, enlarged to hold 25,000 people, it hosted the Latin American Games for the centenary of Brazil’s independence.
Laranjeiras today
In the 1880s the Aliança textile mill brought workers, workers’ housing and electric trams to the neighborhood. Laranjeiras kept its mansions, art deco buildings and tree-lined streets, and remains a leafy, lively residential neighborhood. In neighboring Cosme Velho lived Machado de Assis, Brazil’s great novelist, nicknamed the “Wizard of Cosme Velho”. In 2026, Britain’s Time Out magazine ranked Laranjeiras 17th among the 40 coolest neighborhoods in the world.
Music & bohemian life
Laranjeiras in song
The neighborhood made it into Brazilian pop thanks to Nando Reis. In “All Star”, which he wrote for his friend, the singer Cássia Eller, and released in 2000, Laranjeiras appears as the address of her apartment, where he was a regular visitor. Nando has since said in interviews that the building was actually in neighboring Cosme Velho — but by then the song had already put Laranjeiras on the map. Cássia’s version, on the album Dez de Dezembro (2002), became even better known than the original.
The local bohemian life happens in the street and in circles of musicians: on Saturdays, the Rua General Glicério street market often has live chorinho, and the bars around the market and Praça São Salvador bring together neighbors, musicians and passers-by.