ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the urban imaginaries of Copacabana through a selective reading of aesthetic repertoires that have defined the neighbourhood. In narratives and images gleaned from the media, artistic imaginaries, and architectural forms, it interpret the mythology of Copacabana as shaped by a cluster of concepts such as 'modern tropical hedonism', 'glamour', 'nostalgia', and 'decadence'. Decadent and glamorous, Copacabana is the ambivalent, frayed, and renewed postcard of Rio de Janeiro itself. The chapter imagines the aspect of urban living, how social and individual imagination fabricates realities, dreams, aspirations, myths, and how these are directly linked to live experiences. Urban mythologies and allegorical motifs change with time not only because they age or are surpassed by new configurations but also because the labelling of periods is often invented afterwards. The Copacabana Palace was an architectural project endowed with a highly charged symbolic vocabulary that spelled the enactment of an aristocratic existence of European finesse in the tropics.