Palácio da Alvorada

The president's residence, on a peninsula in Lake Paranoá

The President of Brazil's official residence, on a peninsula jutting into Lake Paranoá about 5 km east of the Three Powers Plaza. The 1958 Niemeyer design is widely considered one of the most refined of his early modernist works — a low, horizontal residence wrapped in a colonnade of slender white columns that flare at top and bottom.

Tours run on Wednesday afternoons only, with advance booking required two weeks ahead. Even from outside the gate, the building and the chapel (a small Niemeyer design that resembles a folded paper boat) are worth the drive.

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A story
The Alvorada — "dawn" in Portuguese, a name chosen by President Juscelino Kubitschek — was the first major Niemeyer building completed in Brasília, inaugurated in 1958, two years before the city itself. The delicate exterior columns flare outward at the base and inward at the top, an inverted Roman arcade Niemeyer described as wanting to suggest "the white sails of caravels".

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