Emperor Pedro II and his wife Empress Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies visited this mountainous corner of Rio de Janeiro state in the mid-nineteenth century and were, by all accounts, charmed. The climate was mild, the scenery extravagant, the air kinder than the coast. When the village at Santo Antonio de Paquequer was elevated to municipality on 6 July 1891, it was named Teresópolis - city of Teresa - in the empress's honor. The imperial family was gone by then, deposed in 1889, but the monarchy's aesthetic preferences had left their mark on the mountains. Before the Portuguese arrived, indigenous peoples lived here; in the colonial era a quilombo of escaped enslaved people occupied the region. In 1821 an English-born Portuguese citizen named George March established the farm that would anchor the settlement's growth.

The mountains around Teresópolis read like a climbing guidebook set in stone. Pedra do Sino, the Bell Rock, rises to 2,263 meters - the highest point in the Serra dos Órgãos National Park. Pedra do Açu follows at 2,230. Agulha do Diabo, the Devil's Needle, is 2,020 meters of vertical challenge. Nariz do Frade, the Friar's Nose, reaches 1,919. Then Dedo de Deus at 1,692, Pedra da Ermitage at 1,485, and Dedo de Nossa Senhora - Our Lady's Finger - at 1,320. The Atlantic Forest drapes over the slopes in tropical profusion, and Serra dos Órgãos National Park lies partly within the city limits. Teresópolis also contains 20% of the enormous 46,350-hectare Três Picos State Park, as well as several smaller conservation areas.

At Granja Comary, on a forested estate in the hills above the city, the Brazil national football team prepares for every major tournament. The Brazilian Football Confederation chose Teresópolis for its training headquarters in part because the climate - subtropical highland, averaging 16 degrees Celsius year-round - is one of the mildest in Brazil. Players arrive from clubs in Europe and around Brazil to acclimate, train, and bond before World Cups and Copa Américas. Black swans drift across Lake Comary. The Brazilian national anthem gets rehearsed for cameras. The rituals of the Seleção - the sharing of a single green-and-yellow jersey across generations - happen in this small mountain town nearly 170 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro.

In January 2011, rain fell on the mountain region of Rio de Janeiro state at a rate that exceeded the expected monthly total in a single twenty-four-hour period. The terrain, already weakened by years of uncontrolled construction on slopes and riverbanks, gave way. In Teresópolis alone, 382 people died. Across the mountain region, more than 610 lives were lost, and thousands lost their homes. It remains the worst weather-related disaster in Brazilian history. Entire neighborhoods were swept into gullies. Mud reached rooflines. The dead were pulled from collapsed houses for weeks afterward. Teresópolis had grown too fast, built in places no one should have built, and the mountains - beautiful, beloved, towering above every window - returned what had been taken from them.

The population was 163,746 at the 2010 census, spread across 770 square kilometers of mountain municipality. The climate allows Teresópolis to serve as a weekend refuge for Rio residents escaping the coastal heat. Pousadas and mountain hotels crowd the ridges. BR-116 - the Rio-Teresópolis highway - carries tourists up the grade from Greater Rio in a climb that leaves the tropics behind and enters something closer to alpine country within two hours. The January 2011 flood zones have largely been rebuilt, though some areas were never resettled. The statue of Empress Teresa Cristina still stands at the city entrance, welcoming travelers to the place that carries her name - the kind of continuity that mountain towns manage better than coastal cities, where memory is measured in stories told rather than walls still standing.