An 1896 neoclassical block on Rua do Catete with an IPHAN-protected facade, still running as a hotel.
The Imperial Hotel occupies a four-story neoclassical building at Rua do Catete 186, across the street from the Palácio do Catete. The building dates to 1896 — the same year the federal government bought the palace opposite — and its facade is protected by IPHAN, the national heritage institute.
Today it operates as the Riale Imperial Flamengo, with 92 rooms, and is regularly cited among the oldest hotel buildings still in service in Rio. For the directory's purposes it matters as a marker of what Rua do Catete looked like at the close of the Empire: a street of solid masonry blocks serving the government quarter around the palace.
Address: Rua do Catete 186, Catete, Rio de Janeiro
The building went up in 1896, when Catete was the political heart of the new Republic and the street outside carried trams, ministries and boarding houses serving the palace. Its conversion to hotel use in the mid-20th century preserved the structure while most of its contemporaries on the street were replaced.
The IPHAN facade protection ties the building to the documented history of the presidential quarter, and its survival gives Rua do Catete one of its few intact 19th-century street walls.
We don't have an active listing in this building at the moment — browse everything we currently have across Rio.
Browse all properties →Brazil's presidential palace from 1897 to 1960, now the Museu da República.
Copacabana's most storied address, beside the Copacabana Palace
Where Tom Jobim composed the soundtrack of bossa nova
The grande dame of the Copacabana beachfront, open since 1923
Want to see what's on the market near Imperial Hotel? Browse current listings across the city.
Browse all properties →