at a glance

a replica of this picture was brought to rio de janeiro by bolivian silver traders, and placed in a small shrine by the water, used by the local fishermen - the only residents of the area until the early nineteenth-century. when friar antônio do desterro survived a drowning at sea and landed on the beach by the shrine, he attributed his salvation to a miracle by the saint in the shrine: nossa senhora de copacabana.

he then had a chapel built for the saint, and so the beach and the neighborhood took their name from the church built in the 17th century to honor our lady of copacabana. from that point on, the area started to develop as the population of rio de janeiro grew, until the early twentieth century, when development accelerated rapidly.

the church doesn't exist anymore, having been demolished to give way to the copacabana fort in 1908, at what is now called posto 6. the image of the saint is still in copacabana, in a church called matriz nossa senhora de copacabana and  located on praça serzedelo correia, inside the local building.