1. Social
March 3, 2015updated 20 Jul 2021 12:53pm

Rio de Janeiro celebrated its 450th birthday with a quarter-of-a-mile-long cake

By City Monitor Staff

Exactly 450 years ago last Sunday, Portuguese settlers founded the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. And so, to celebrate the big day, the city authorities decided it would be apt and proper to bake a cake. Rather a big cake, actually. To be specific, a meter of cake for every year. 


So, yeah, that’s a cake nearly half a kilometre long. 

Three days before the celebrations, 10 pastry chefs set about baking the dessert product in question, which was completed just in time for Sunday’s giant birthday party. The cake was then laid out on trestle tables along a cordoned-off street, and chefs with buckets of icing added the finishing touches.

Here are some happy party-goers, admiring the completed thing:

What followed looks like the most joyous celebration of a city’s birth since time began, especially for the city’s children. 

Content from our partners
The key role of heat network integration in creating one of London’s most sustainable buildings
The role of green bonds in financing the urban energy transition
The need to grow London's EV infrastructure at speed and scale

Apart from this child, who clearly hates cake and/or joy: 

We’re left with two questions: first, why don’t more cities have birthday parties? And second, is there any cake left? 

All images: Getty.

This article is from the CityMetric archive: some formatting and images may not be present.
Topics in this article :
Websites in our network