Christ the Redeemer, or Cristo Redentor in Portuguese, is a huge statue of Jesus Christ on top of Mount Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Corcovado is a mountain that towers over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s main port city. It has been praised in traditional and popular songs. Christ the Redeemer is a statue that was finished in 1931.
Christ the Redeemer Height
It is 98 feet (30 meters) tall, and its horizontally stretched arms reach 92 feet (28 meters). The statue has become a symbol of both Rio de Janeiro and all of Brazil as a whole. The statue is made of reinforced concrete and covered in a mosaic of thousands of triangular soapstone tiles. It sits on a 26-foot-high (8-meter-high) square stone pedestal base that is set on a deck at the top of the mountain. The statue is the world’s biggest sculpture in the Art Deco style.
Christ the Redeemer History
In the 1850s, a Vincentian priest named Pedro Maria Boss proposed putting a Christian monument on Mount Corcovado to honor Isabel, the daughter of Emperor Pedro II and the princess regent of Brazil. However, the project was never approved.
The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro suggested in 1921 that a statue of Christ be built on the 2,310-foot (704-meter) summit, where it would be visible from anywhere in Rio because of its commanding height. People asked President Epitácio Pessoa to let them build the statue on top of Mount Corcovado. Permission was given, and the base’s first stone was set in a ceremony on April 4, 1922, which was the 100th anniversary of Brazil’s independence from Portugal.
Christ of the Redeemer Church
The final design of the monument has not yet been decided. In the same year, a contest was held to find a designer. The Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa won based on his sketches of a figure of Christ holding a cross in his right hand and the world in his left. Silva Costa later changed the plan with the help of Brazilian artist Carlos Oswald.
Oswald is said to have come up with the idea of the figure standing with her arms wide open. Silva Costa and the French sculptor Paul Landowski worked together on the final design. The figure’s head and hands are mainly the work of Landowski. The money came from private sources, mostly from the church.
Silva Costa oversaw the building process, which began in 1926 and went on for five years. During that time, workers and supplies were brought to the top by train. On October 12, 1931, the statue was given a name and a place of honor. Over the years, it has had some repairs and renovations, like a thorough cleaning in 1980 before Pope John Paul II came to Brazil that year, and a big project in 2010 when the surface was fixed and made new again.
Since 2002, escalators and panoramic elevators have been added. Before that, the last step of the trip was to climb more than 200 steps to get to the statue. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the statue in 2006, a chapel was built at its base and dedicated to Our Lady of Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil.
Facts about Christ the Redeemer
Christ the Redeemer is one of the most well-known monuments in the world. It is on top of Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But how well do you know this well-known statue? Here are 10 things about Christ the Redeemer that you may not have known before.
1. Christ the Redeemer was made with reinforced concrete and has 6 million soapstone tiles on the outside. The workers who made these tiles may have written notes on the backs of some of them. This means that this famous landmark is full of hidden messages.
2. Because the statue is on top of a mountain, it often gets hit by lightning. This happens about three to six times a year. Before the 2014 FIFA World Cup, lightning hit the statue and broke one of its thumbs.
3. The statue looked different when it was first made than it does now. Christ was supposed to have one hand on a globe and the other on a cross, not two open arms.
4. The statue of Christ the Redeemer was not built in Brazil. It was first made by the French sculptor Paul Landowski. He used clay pieces to make the statue. Then, the Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa and the French engineer Albert Caquot took them to Brazil and rebuilt them with reinforced concrete.
5. It took 9 years to build the statue. It was started in 1922 and finished in 1931, at a cost of $250,000 US dollars.
6. The title of the statue is astounding. It was chosen as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, along with places like the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, and the Rose City of Petra in Jordan.
7. It is the tallest art-deco statue in the world and one of the biggest statues of Jesus. Christ the Redeemer is 30 meters tall and has arms that are 28 meters wide.
8. The prices of houses in Rio de Janeiro have gone up just because they have a view of Christ the Redeemer. Apartments that have even a small view of the statue are more expensive than those that are in the same place and are the same size but don’t have a view.
9. The statue was made from light-colored stone that came from a quarry near the city of Ouro Preto. But there isn’t much of this stone, so different kinds are being used to fix things up. So, darker stone is slowly replacing the original stone, so that Christ the Redeemer is getting darker over time.
10. Nearly 2 million people visit Christ the Redeemer every year. The most people ever to visit the statue in one day was 14,000 on Easter of 2011.
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