the biblioteca nacional do brasil, for instance, is considered by unesco to be one of the ten largest national libraries in the world and the real gabinete de leitura is consistently rated as one of the world's most beautiful. furthermore, in niterói one can find the biblioteca publíca de niterói, a historically and culturally significant state library.

a fundamental part of understanding Rio is to understand, how it was shaped by the writings of journalists, intellectuals and artists. At the end of the 19th Century the city's soul lay in its centre, where a vast number of its great thinkers resided, continually representing and transforming it with the great force of their pen.