The Christ statue in Sertaozinho, northwest of Sao Paulo city, will be 187 feet tall when perched on its 128 foot (39-meter) pedestal, Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said on Tuesday.
Rio`s iconic statue overlooking the beach-side city measures up at 98.4 feet high, but its much shorter pedestal gives it a total height of just 125 feet.
`Far from a pretense of grandeur, we`re thinking about visibility,` said Nerio Costa, mayor of the town 206 miles from Sao Paulo which hopes to inaugurate the 1.5 million reais ($681,000) structure at Easter.
But those suspicious that Sertaozinho, with a population of just over 100,000, is trying to rival the country`s top tourist city can cite other evidence.
The agricultural town also boasts a lake-side artificial 160-yard (meter) beach built at a cost of $3.64 million (8 million reais), Folha said. (Reuters)
Image: A little-known Brazilian farming town with sugar cane wealth is set to upstage Rio de Janeiro by erecting a statue of Christ that will eclipse its famous equivalent atop Rio`s Corcovado mountain.
Wordsmiths want ‘green’, ‘bailout’, ‘iconic’ banned in 2009! | More Offbeat News
