Where to stay in Rio de Janeiro

Two bairros in a row along the southern shore, between the ocean and the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas: a beach divided into numbered posts that work as social addresses, a grid of low buildings behind it, and the densest run of good restaurants, bars and bookshops in the city. Leblon is the quieter and dearer end, Ipanema the busier one; the two are one place with a canal in the middle. What you pay for it is the highest rates on this list, and what you give up is the historic city, half an hour north.

Four kilometres of beach in a curve, with Leme closing the eastern end under the hill, and behind it a dense grid of tall buildings holding more hotel rooms than the rest of this list together. Two metro stations, a promenade busy from six in the morning, and every price of room from a hostel to a palace on the same avenue. Louder, older and less fashionable than Ipanema, and for most first visits the practical answer rather than the romantic one.

The bay side, between the beaches and the centre: Botafogo, Flamengo, Catete, Glória, Laranjeiras and Urca, with Sugarloaf at the end of the last of them. This is where cariocas live rather than visit — a metro line running the whole length, Flamengo's park along the water, and the best-value eating in the city in Botafogo's side streets. The water here is the bay, which is for looking at rather than swimming in.

The hill above Lapa: cobbled streets, colonial and belle-époque houses, artists' studios in some of them, the yellow tram climbing through, and views over the whole bay from almost anywhere. It is the most distinctive place to stay in Rio and the least convenient — nothing is walkable from it except downhill, and the way back is a tram, a taxi or a climb.

The old city and the arches: churches and colonial squares among the towers, the Confeitaria Colombo, the museums at Praça Mauá, the Selarón steps, and under the aqueduct the bars and samba houses that are Rio's late nightlife. It holds more of what a visitor came to see than any other area here, at the lowest rates on this list. It also empties and then fills again: Centro is an office district, so after seven on a weekday and on Sundays the streets crowded at lunchtime are not, while Lapa is the opposite and specific — busy and loud on Friday and Saturday nights and ordinary the rest of the week. Which street the hotel is on, and which night you are asking about, matters more here than anywhere else in this city.