The Carnival in Rio:

The famous carnival parade has been going on since the 1930s. Until 1984, when it was moved to Av. Presidente Vargas, the parade took place at Praca Onze. In 1984 the parade finally found its permanent home, the Sambadrome.

The Sambódromo:
The Sambadrome is a large structure that was built in the downtown area, which includes several buildings that make a circular open area in the middle. In the off season, the buildings of the Sambadrome are used as classrooms for the local public schools.

The Samba Schools:
The carnival parade is filled with people and floats from various samba schools. A samba school can either be an actual school or just a collaboration of local neighbors that want to attend carnival.

The purpose of carnival is for samba schools to compete with fellow rival schools; this competition is the climax of the whole carnival festival. Each school chooses a theme to try and portray in their entry. The samba schools work to build the best floats and costumes to represent their themes, and to include the best music they can from their band called the bateria. There are many parts to each school's entry including the six to eight floats and thousands of participants.

There is a special order that every school has to follow with their parade entries. Each school begins with the "comissäo de frente", which is the first wing. The "comissäo de frente" is made up of ten to fifteen people only, and they are the ones who introduce the school and set the mood. These people have choreographic dances in fancy costumes that usually tell a short story. Following the "comissäo de frente" is the first float of the samba school, called "abre-alas".

Some of the important roles include the porta-bandeira and mestre-sala. The porta-bandeira is a very important lady who is in charge of the samba school flag, including making sure to not allow the flag to roll. She is accompanied by the mestre-sala, who is supposed to draw everyone’s attention to "his queen", the porta-bandeira. Floatees, who are also important, are the people who populate the floats, also known as destaques. The floatees have the most luxurious and expensive costumes that can be extremely heavy. Along with all the floatees is one main floatee that is located at the top of each float. The main destaque dances and sings for the entire time that the float is on the runway.

One other aspect that is mandatory is the presence of the ala das baianas. This is a wing of the samba school entry that includes at least 100 females only. These women along with many other people do not ride on the floats as many others do, instead they are passistas, the people who belong to the samba school that do the marching alongside and between the floats.

Street Carnival:
As the parade is taking place in the Sambadrome and the balls are being held in the Copacabana Palace and beach, many of the carnival participants are at other locations. Street festivals are very common during carnival and are highly populated by the locals. Elegance and extravagance are usually left behind, but music and dancing are still extremely common. Anyone is allowed to participate in the street festivals. Bandas and bondos are very familiar with the street carnival especially because it takes nothing to join in on the fun expect to jump in. One of the most well known bandas of Rio is Banda de Ipanema. Banda de Ipanema was first created in 1965 and is known as Rio’s most irreverent street band

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