Barra da Tijuca · Rio de Janeiro

Ilha Pura (Vila dos Atletas)

The Rio 2016 Athletes' Village — 31 towers and 3,604 apartments — converted into Barra's largest planned residential district.

Landmark building

About the building

Ilha Pura is the residential district built as the Athletes' Village for the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, on an 800,000 m² site off Avenida Salvador Allende, next to the Riocentro convention center. The numbers are unlike anything else in the city: 31 towers of 17 floors each, holding 3,604 apartments split across seven independent condominiums, with parkland and landscaped grounds between them.

Apartments are practical two-to-four-bedroom layouts originally built to house some 18,000 athletes and staff, then finished for the open market. Each of the seven condominiums runs its own pools, courts and security, and the district sits within easy reach of the BRT corridors and the Olympic Park cluster. For buyers it offers new-build stock at scale in a neighborhood where most landmark addresses are decades old.

Address: Av. Salvador Allende, Ilha Pura, Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro

History

The village was developed ahead of the 2016 Games and handed over as planned: athletes first, then a conversion into a private residential district. The conversion proved slower than the developers hoped — by 2019 only around 512 units had sold, under 15% of the total, and the half-empty towers became a running story in the Rio press.

The turnaround came in 2024, when BTG Pactual acquired the project and relaunched sales; more than a thousand units have sold since, and the district has filled in with everyday life — schools runs, deliveries, weekend sport — rather than standing as an Olympic leftover.