Back in 2009 when Rio de Janeiro was named one of the host cities of the 2014 World Cup, word was that the smartest places to stay would be the Gloria Palace and the Nacional. The Gloria, built in 1922, had just been sold and was due to be lavishly refurbished, as was the Nacional, a glass-and-steel high-rise masterpiece by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. Five years on, neither is even near completion.  All this will have come as a relief to the city’s two enduring great hotels: the venerable Belmond Copacabana Palace, which opened in 1924 and still reigns supreme over Copacabana Beach, and Fasano, an 89-room celeb magnet designed by Philippe Starck that opened in 2007 on Ipanema Beach.  I sought advice both from Paul Irvine, the infinitely expert Rio-based co-founder of Dehouche, the specialist operator to, in particular, Brazil, and Stéphane Bouvier, of Escape Collection, a new website focusing on similar territory. Irvine was confident I’d prefer Fasano and booked me a room. Bouvier urged me not to disregard the Copacabana. There was nothing for it but to check into them both.  Ultimately, of course, it’s a matter of taste. Fasano is designed within an inch of its life. Its dimly lit, irregularly contoured, sandalwood-scented corridors furnished with Gaetano Pesce Up5 chairs have the slightly unnerving atmosphere of a David Lynch movie. But the rooms are great: full of daylight (each has a balcony) and lamps and mirrors to compensate for dark wood floors, walls and furniture (some of it by, or at least evocative of, Mies van der Rohe during his Barcelona Pavilion period).  True to Mies’s dictum that God is in the details, the finish is exemplary, the scheme thought through. There are swathes of pewter-coloured concertina-pleated satin that act not only as curtains but can be used to divide the sleeping from the living area, and the bath is aligned to give you a view of the beach (there’s a glass-inset blind for privacy). But the hotel’s real glory is its infinitely glamorous rooftop pool and bar, accessible only to guests, from which one looks down on the beach, up at Cristo Redentor and across to the Dois Irmãos and Gavea mountains.  All that said, there will be many who think the pool at the Copacabana Palace is better still, not least because it’s big enough to lap, not merely pose in. And the food in its adjoining restaurant – Pergula – is a great deal more accomplished than the disappointing club sandwiches and salads at Fasano. Avoid the dreary indoor buffet, and order a filet mignon (Brazilian beef is outstandingly good and miraculously inexpensive) with baked palm heart on the terrace.  In keeping with the hotel’s heritage – its architect also designed the Negresco in Nice and the Carlton in Cannes – the Copacabana’s recently renovated rooms are traditional, unfussy (bar the swirly carpets) and hung with picture of old Brazil. The products in its lavish bathrooms are Etro (Fasano has its own brand). And given the roar of the Atlantic and the traffic on Avenida Atlantica, the soundproofing is exemplary, which cannot be said of Fasano, where, for the record, the big pop acts and their entourages tend to stay, so you may be disturbed by the shrieking fans who gather on the pavement outside. In contrast, the Copacabana pays homage to almost a century of celebrity patronage with galleries of black-and-white portraits of statesmen, film stars, writers and artists, an alphabet that runs from Fred Astaire to Stefan Zweig. Our upstairs neighbours at Fasano were One Direction.  That said, I loved both hotels. Fasano has cool, attitude, style, outstandingly charming and attentive staff who will loan you a surfboard, a bike or a skateboard; the Copacabana Palace has class, heritage, punctiliousness and polish. But I do think Ipanema – the beach where, as Astrud Gilberto sang, the girls are “tall and tan and young and lovely”, which they surely are – is much the more attractive neighbourhood.Rooms at the Belmond Copacabana Palace about £315 and at Fasano from about £230.
Rio de Janeiro's two best hotels, the Fasano and Copacabana Palace are going head to head to compete for World Cup custom