Hotel Marambaia, Rio de Janeiro

We arrived in the wet heat of a Rio afternoon, the air thick with salt and frangipani, and found Hotel Marambaia tucked onto Rua Vinícius de Moraes, the very street that gave the world a bossa nova standard. The lobby is small and cool and unmistakably carioca: a floor of black-and-white Portuguese stone in a wave pattern, low rosewood furniture, a wall of glazed azulejos in ocean blues. A ceiling fan turned slowly. The receptionist, barefoot-casual in the best Ipanema way, handed us a caipirinha and pointed up: the rooftop, she said, was where we would want to be by six.

The room

Our room was, in all honesty, compact, this being a slim tower on prized land. But every centimetre was considered. Brazilian hardwood lined one wall, the bed sat low under a headboard of woven cane, and a sliver of balcony held two chairs and, if you leaned, a wedge of sea. The design nodded hard to the 1960s: a teak writing desk, a brass arc lamp, prints of old Rio on the walls. Blackout linen curtains kept the morning sun at bay, the air conditioning was mercifully strong, and the small bathroom gleamed with green marble and a powerful rainfall shower.

Marambaia trades square metres for something rarer in Ipanema: genuine design, and the beach almost literally at the door.The Suite Edit

Service & food

The team is young, warm and refreshingly unstuffy, equally able to organise a surfboard or a table at a hard-to-book Leblon restaurant. Breakfast on the rooftop is a generous carioca spread, tropical fruit you cannot name, warm pão de queijo, eggs to order and juices pressed while you watch. There is no full restaurant, but the rooftop bar runs a tight menu of petiscos and excellent caipirinhas until late, and the pool deck, with the Dois Irmãos peaks turning pink at sunset, is the hotel's beating heart. For dinner, all of Ipanema and Leblon waits a short stroll away.

The verdict

Hotel Marambaia is for the traveller who measures a Rio hotel in steps to the sand and appreciates real design when they find it, ideally a couple or solo beach-goer who plans to be out and about. The rooftop alone earns its keep. The honest caveat is the rooms: they are small, and a few face the building next door rather than the water, so it is worth requesting a higher floor and tempering expectations on space. Come for the location, the design and that pink-peaked sunset, not for sprawling suites.