Brigitte Bardot's peninsula — 23 beaches, pastel cobblestones, and Rio's most glamorous escape
Búzios (officially Armação dos Búzios) is a hook-shaped peninsula of 23 beaches stretching east from Rio de Janeiro, an 180km drive that takes you from one of the world's great metropolises to a genuinely charming resort town of cobblestone streets, seafood restaurants open to the sea breeze, and beaches ranging from the sheltered Ferradura (ideal for snorkelling) to the wave-swept Geriba (for surfing). The town was transformed from a simple fishing village into an international destination almost overnight after Brigitte Bardot spent a holiday here in 1964 — a bronze statue of Bardot now sit…
Búzios was a quiet fishing and whaling settlement for most of its history — 'búzios' means sea shells in Portuguese, and the peninsula was named for the shells the indigenous Tamoio people collected here. The village remained isolated until the road from Rio arrived in the 1950s. Brigitte Bardot's 1964 visit with Brazilian boyfriend Bob Zaguri triggered an explosion of media coverage that made Búzios synonymous with Mediterranean-style glamour in the southern hemisphere. By the 1970s the town had transformed from a fishing village to a resort, though its scale and building height restrictions…