The art deco movie palace of Praça Saens Peña.
The Cine Carioca building stands at Rua Conde de Bonfim 338, on Praça Saens Peña — the square that has been Tijuca's commercial and social center for a century. Opened as a single-screen cinema with more than a thousand seats and a Carrara-marble foyer, it is the best surviving piece of the art deco wave that shaped the square's architecture in the 1930s and 40s.
The auditorium no longer shows films — the building now serves as a church — but the facade and volume remain, protected by municipal heritage listing, and it still anchors the corner of a square served directly by the metro and ringed with mid-century residential blocks.
Address: Rua Conde de Bonfim 338, Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro
The Severiano Ribeiro exhibition group inaugurated the Carioca on 26 March 1941, at the height of the street-cinema era, when Saens Peña had several competing movie palaces — the América across the way among them. It was considered one of the most luxurious cinemas outside Cinelândia.
As street cinemas died out across Rio in the 1980s and 90s, the Carioca was the only one in the area to win heritage protection. The screen eventually went dark in the early 2000s and the building passed to religious use, with its deco exterior intact.
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Browse all properties →An imperial-era military school on the old Conde de Bonfim estate.
The neighborhood's social club since 1915, built around a casarão on Conde de Bonfim.
Copacabana's most storied address, beside the Copacabana Palace
Where Tom Jobim composed the soundtrack of bossa nova
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