Christ the Redeemer looks as if it has always been there, which is a tribute to how well it suits the mountain. It is younger than the railway that climbs to it, it was paid for by collection plates and petitions, and its final form was settled only after the foundation stone had been laid.
At a glance
Timeline
- 1859
A priest’s idea
Pierre-Marie Boss, a French Lazarist priest serving as a chaplain in Botafogo, imagines a religious monument on the summit of Corcovado, in honour of Princess Isabel. The project is never approved.
- 1884
The railway arrives first
Emperor Pedro II opens the Corcovado railway, the first in Brazil built purely for sightseeing. The summit becomes a day out.
- 1921
The Church revives the plan
With the centenary of independence a year away, the Archdiocese of Rio proposes a statue of Christ on the mountain, high enough to be seen from anywhere in the city.
- 1922
Petition and foundation stone
More than 20,000 women, led by the writer Laurita Lacerda, petition President Epitácio Pessoa to permit the statue. Permission is given and the foundation stone is laid during the centenary year, before a design exists.
- 1922 to 1926
Choosing a design
The engineer Heitor da Silva Costa wins the competition. His first sketch shows Christ carrying a cross and a globe. Working with the artist Carlos Oswald and the French sculptor Paul Landowski, he replaces it with the open-armed figure.
- 1926
Building begins
Work starts on the summit, with materials and workers going up by train. The master builder, Heitor Levy, moves onto the mountain for the duration.
- 1929
A second collection
With the money running low, a second national fundraising campaign keeps the project going.
- 12 October 1931
Inauguration
The monument is blessed by Cardinal Sebastião Leme on the feast of Our Lady of Aparecida, patron saint of Brazil.
- 1980
A papal visit
The statue is cleaned for the visit of Pope John Paul II, who comes to the summit on 2 July.
- 2002
Lifts and escalators
Panoramic lifts and escalators are added. Until then, the last stage for every visitor had been a climb of more than 200 steps.
- 2006
A sanctuary
On its 75th anniversary the monument becomes a sanctuary of the archdiocese, and a chapel to Our Lady of Aparecida is consecrated in the pedestal.
- 7 July 2007
A new wonder
Christ the Redeemer is named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide public vote.
- 2010 and 2014
Repairs
A major restoration renews the soapstone surface in 2010. In January 2014 lightning breaks a piece off the right thumb and damages the head, and both are repaired with stone kept for the purpose.
Key facts
- Built
- 1926 to 1931
- Inaugurated
- 12 October 1931
- Engineer and designer
- Heitor da Silva Costa
- Sculptor
- Paul Landowski, with Carlos Oswald on the design
- Paid for by
- Public donations
- New Seven Wonders
- Voted in on 7 July 2007
The people
Heitor da Silva Costa was the Brazilian engineer who won the design competition, redrew the statue, chose its materials and ran the works. If one person made Christ the Redeemer, he did.
Carlos Oswald, a Brazilian painter, is credited with the pose: a standing Christ with arms spread wide, in place of the cross and globe of the first sketch.
Paul Landowski, a French sculptor, worked with Silva Costa on the final form and is credited as the main designer of the head and the hands.
The engineer Albert Caquot was part of the design team, and Pedro Fernandes Viana was the supervising engineer. Heitor Levy, the master builder, lived on the summit from 1926 to 1931 and used the rising pedestal as his office.
The name
Cristo Redentor means Christ the Redeemer. At the blessing in 1931 Cardinal Leme proclaimed “Cristo vence! Cristo reina! Cristo impera!”, Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.
The date was chosen with care. The twelfth of October is the feast of Our Lady of Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil, which is why the chapel added in the pedestal 75 years later is dedicated to her.
The history of Christ the Redeemer
The idea and the railway, 1859 to 1884
Corcovado means hunchback, after the shape of the peak. When Father Boss proposed a monument in 1859, Brazil was an empire and the idea was to honour Princess Isabel, the emperor’s daughter. Nothing was built. He was still thinking about it decades later, and put the mountain into a poem in 1903.
What did get built was the railway. Pedro II approved it in 1882, the engineers Francisco Pereira Passos and João Teixeira Soares laid it out, and it opened in 1884. That line is the reason the later project was possible at all. Nobody could have raised a concrete statue on this summit by mule.
The campaign and the petition, 1921 to 1922
By the 1920s Rio’s Catholics wanted a monument over the capital, and the centenary of independence in 1922 gave them a date to aim at. The archdiocese proposed the statue in 1921. The petition that followed, signed by more than 20,000 women, persuaded President Epitácio Pessoa to grant the summit.
The foundation stone went down in the centenary year with no agreed design. Three proposals competed, from José Agostinho dos Reis, Adolfo Morales de los Rios and Heitor da Silva Costa, and Silva Costa’s won. Funds came from collections across the country, principally through the Church.
From a cross and a globe to open arms, 1922 to 1926
Silva Costa’s winning sketch showed Christ holding a large cross in one hand and the world in the other. It was not what was built. Working with Carlos Oswald, he arrived at a simpler figure whose whole body forms the cross, arms level, facing the rising sun over the bay.
The change solved a practical problem as well as an artistic one. A figure meant to be read from the streets of a city 700 metres below has to be a silhouette first, and nothing reads more clearly against the sky than this one. Landowski then worked with Silva Costa on the modelling, and the head and hands are credited to him.
Building on the summit, 1926 to 1931
Construction began in 1926 and took five years. Everything went up on the rack railway, materials and men alike. Heitor Levy, the master builder, lived at the top throughout. The statue is reinforced concrete, and its skin is a mosaic of small soapstone triangles, chosen by Silva Costa because the stone is handsome and stands up to erosion.
The whole project cost 2,500 contos de réis, against the 60,000 spent on the Statue of Liberty and its metal frame. A second collection in 1929 brought in more than 500 contos de réis when the money ran short.
How the structure works, and what is inside it, is on our architecture page.
Since the inauguration in 1931
The monument was inaugurated on 12 October 1931. For its first seventy years, reaching it meant the train and then more than 200 steps. Lifts and escalators arrived in 2002. Those escalators are now being replaced in their turn.
In 2006, at 75, it was made a sanctuary of the archdiocese, and the chapel in the pedestal was consecrated. In 2007 a worldwide public vote made it one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
The Sanctuary’s own list of visitors since includes John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Diana and Charles, and Barack Obama with his family. More than 1.5 million people a year still arrive on the railway that Pedro II opened in 1884.
Did you know?
The foundation stone is older than the design
The stone was laid in 1922. The open-armed figure did not exist on paper until after the competition had been won with a different one.
The builder lived on the job, and changed religion on it
Heitor Levy spent five years living on the summit of Corcovado and ran the site from an office inside the pedestal, so that he could consult the drawings at any hour. No one was seriously hurt in the five years, and Levy himself walked away from a fall that should have killed him. He was Jewish, and he converted to Catholicism afterwards.
A petition of women made it possible
More than 20,000 signatures, collected by the writer Laurita Lacerda, went to the president in 1922.
The priest who first imagined it wrote it a poem
Pierre-Marie Boss never saw a monument on Corcovado, but in 1903 he addressed the mountain in verse as a “giant of stone”.