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Cellpic Sunday – The Mystery Building in Rio de Janeiro

A mystery only to me.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

We arrived in Rio on the afternoon of March 17 2023 and had two days to explore Rio before boarding our ship for the transatlantic cruise. That evening we went for a walk and passed by the building in the photo above. The building’s architecture spoke to me and I tried several photos from different angles. There was no signage that told me of the purpose of the building, but I figured that when I got home, I’d look up the coordinates captured on my phone with the photo and Google Maps would tell me the details.

Well, not so much. It turned out that somehow I’d shut off the GPS location tagging so none of my photos from Rio or from the first couple of stops in Brazil were tagged with GPS coordinates. It appeared from the fencing in front of the main entrance that the building might be in the middle of a renovation, but I have no other reason to believe that.

Three clues to the building included running the Neo sharpness tool to look more closely at the facade. First, the street number on the building is 291. There are also two posters flanking the doors that make me think the building might be a theater. The sharpened portions of the posters are below.

For those of you who might have an idea of the location and name of this beautiful building, please leave a comment. Note: Thanks to Lookoom’s comment below, the mystery has been solved. It is the Copacabana Palace Theater, located about a two-minute walk from our hotel. Check out his travel blog here.

Names are unreadable on this poster.
Three readable names: Luis, Lazaro, and Georgi.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make out any of the last names of the people listed on the posters. In the poster above, I could see three first names. There are four people in the poster and it appears the female is named Georgi, though I think Georgi would be uncommon for Brazilian names. But then, what do I know about Brazilian names? Not much.

About the photo: Captured on my Samsung S23U, we explored the area near our hotel for a place to eat dinner, and upon our return, we passed the building. The Samsung S23U does a much better job at night photography than my Sony, plus it’s the camera that I always have with me. I didn’t take my Nikon on this trip as we traveled with minimal gear so we wouldn’t have to check luggage on the airplane segments of our trip. Once I downloaded the image into Lightroom Classic, I tried to straighten the vertical lines but discovered that doing so cropped too much of the image. I manually adjusted for lean as much as I dared and sent the image to Luminar Neo for final tweaks, basically Enhanced AI and Noiseless. I only used the Sharpness tool after completing the final image just to see if I could read the text on the signs. As I noted above, that was marginally helpful.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

65 comments

    • That is it! The theater is part of the Copacabana Palace Hotel, a 5-star hotel that is but a 2-minute walk from the hotel where we were staying. Images of the theater in Google Maps confirm your suggestion.

      Reply

      • The Copacabana Hotel was built even before the beach was famous. Walking along the promenade with its famous wave-shaped mosaics, it’s hard not to notice the beautiful old facade of the Palace, contrasting with the more modern buildings surrounding it. I also took several photos of it, walking from Ipanema where I was.

  10. […] German car number plates consist of one, two, or three letters denoting the region, random one or more often two letters and up to four digits. You had to take the middle letters that luck (and the district office) gave you, nowadays you can pay a nominal fee and receive the letters and numbers of your choice. Many car plates spell actual words and I’ve made it a kind of hobby to photograph them, German or English. Some regions and towns are better than others in making words. WO for Worms yields good results although I have yet to see an actual WO-RM. Many of these snaps are taken from the passenger side of the car with my phone camera so they are perfect for Cellpic Sunday. […]

    Reply

  26. Nice building and great that the mystery is solved 🙂. Ever since I’ve stopped location services for my pictures (to keep the battery running a bit longer), I’m also often struggling to figure out later what place could that picture be of 😂.
    My entry here:

    The House Full of Windows

    Reply

  30. Too funny that you turned off your GPS. I often wish I had more information once I start writing. I’m glad someone recognized it. It’s a beautiful place. I’ll have mine ready on Wed. as usual. 🙂

    Reply

    • Thank you, my friend! We have just started our world explorations and as we branch out, we plan to visit other countries as time permits.
      I don’t know much about Turkey, but Istanbul and Ankara are cities I am familiar with, at least in name.

      Reply

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