Rio de Janeiro – With three weeks to go before this city’s world renowned Carnival, Rio is getting set to inaugurate Samba City, a kind of theme park that will keep the “samba schools” on view all year long.
Main attraction of the entertainment complex opening Saturday will be the gigantic workshops where Carnival floats are made, enlivened with restaurants, a museum, shops, parking and a theater area.
From now on, this is where Rio de Janeiro’s leading samba schools will conceive and execute the music, costumes and floats for their world-famous parades at the Sambodrome during the four days of Carnival.
Samba-school workshops were formerly improvised in storerooms of faraway neighborhoods, but have now been brought together in Samba City as a tourist attraction 12 months of the year.
Although some $46 million have been invested in building Samba City, town hall will hand over its operation to the schools for an initial 25-year period, and in return will take only a 10 percent commission on theme-park ticket sales.
As well as commercializing the spaces of the expo, restaurants, bars and shops, the samba groups are responsible for offering musical and cultural shows to bring in the tourists.
The park’s main attraction will be a raised runway that allows visitors to see the workshops of the 14 schools and watch how the costumes and floats are made, as well as enjoying music and dance rehearsals.
The structures provided for each of the 14 samba schools will have their own areas for administration, workshops, storerooms, carpinter shops, wardrobe, stores, grounds for parade rehearsals and exhibition halls.
Samba City is very, very different from the old, cramped storerooms where Carnival parades were once prepared.
