Carnival All Year Round in Rio de Janeiro

There are countless rationales that make Rio de Janeiro a well-known city worldwide, and perhaps the carnival is the biggest of all those reasons. Now Rio’s famous carnivals could be running all year round according to a plan that local authorities still have in the offing.

The Samba City, a 93,000-square-meter compound housing the workshops of some fourteen samba schools, will open in September. Those same schools will also hold parades and shows in addition to offering visitors a closer look at the preparations of the world’s best-known street celebration.

The $25 million initiative, bankrolled by the city’s municipality office, will definitely give the unused and rundown Rio harbor area a new lease on life.

The project includes keepsake stores and groceries that are expected to draw somewhere between 700,000 and a million tourists each year. Foreigners shelled out some $450 million in Rio de Janeiro between January and April this year, up a whopping 45 percent from the same span of time in 2003.

Tourism is a key element for Rio’s economy and for the Samba City, and this is by far the first big-time investment aimed at capitalizing the carnivals since 1984, when city officials built the Samba Dome, now home to the annual contest of carnival samba bands.

Representatives of samba schools downplayed fears that the Rio Carnival is increasingly becoming a commercial party that’s quickly letting go of its roots planted in the city’s favelas (slums).