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The parade
Each school has 75 minutes to cross the avenue
On four consecutive nights before Lent, samba schools parade one after another along a 700 metres stretch of Marquês de Sapucaí street. Each school has 75 minutes to go from one end to the other with all its thousands of dancers, its drum section and a number of floats. A jury grades them, and the competition is ferocious.
The order
A school opens with a short story told in dance
Each school begins with the comissão de frente, ten to fifteen people in elaborate costumes whose choreographed dances usually tell a short story. The first float, the abre-alas or Opening Wing, comes next. After it come the Mestre-sala and Porta-Bandeira, the Master of Ceremonies and Flag Bearer, then the old guard veterans, and the drum line battery at the rear.
The first schools
Estácio de Sá, Portela and Mangueira first paraded in 1929
Estácio de Sá, Portela and Estação Primeira de Mangueira paraded for the first time in the city in 1929. All three had been carnival blocks that became schools with professional staffing and city support. Schools gave blocos a way to increase their legitimacy and avert police oppression, because Black people were often oppressed by the police for any street Carnival activities.
Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer designed it in 1983 as a permanent home for the parade
Until then the stands had been temporary. In 1983 the governor Leonel Brizola asked Oscar Niemeyer, newly back from exile, to design a permanent venue, finished in 1984. Beneath the bleachers sits a primary school with 115 classrooms. Look for the Praça da Apoteose, a 90 metres trilegged arch that became a noted symbol of the Rio Carnival.
Today
Prices push many Brazilians out, so the free street parties grow
The parade avenue is painted gray each year before Carnival, and in December the schools begin technical rehearsals there. Inflated prices to watch the star schools exclude many Brazilians from attending. In reaction, Rio has seen a resurgence of free block parties, the blocos, in suburbs all over the city.
Day 3, evening
It comes after Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí and the Wikipedia article Rio Carnival, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.