The beach, a seven-minute walk. The pool, when you come back.

It is the beach at the foot of the hill, and one of the South Zone's best-kept secrets. A small sheltered cove of pale sand, which the house shares with the Sheraton Grand Rio — the large hotel at the foot of Vidigal. The hotel maintains and watches over the beach: there are people keeping an eye on it, the sand is clean, and you find neither the crowds nor the hustle of Copacabana. You go down with a towel and flip-flops and think about nothing else.

And it is beautiful. The water is calm, green and clear because the bay is closed; a few strokes from the shore a dark rock rises out of the sea and gives the whole thing the look of a lagoon — the kind of picture you would file under Maldives rather than a city of six million. Behind it, the Dois Irmãos peak drops straight into the water. Seven minutes from the front door, downhill.

This is what sets it apart from most "close to the beach" rentals in Rio: here the beach is not an anonymous open stretch. It lies at the foot of a large international hotel that maintains and supervises it, at the entrance to a neighbourhood with a single road in and out and a permanent police presence since 2011. Cariocas call Vidigal "Rio's safe". You go to the beach with your phone and your wallet — not a sentence anyone writes lightly about Rio.

Leblon begins on the other side of Avenida Niemeyer: five minutes by taxi and you are on the smartest sand in Rio, steps from the market and the restaurants. Ipanema follows immediately — Posto 9, and Arpoador where the whole city applauds the sunset — ten minutes away. São Conrado, where the paragliders from Pedra Bonita come down to land, is eight minutes in the other direction. Copacabana is eighteen.

A beachfront hotel gives you the beach, and a pool shared with two hundred people. Here it is the other way round: the beach is seven minutes away and the pool is yours. Eight metres by three, 1.40 m deep, edged with an ipê deck under a large tree, lit at night, facing the ocean and the Cagarras islands. An outdoor shower for the sand, an outdoor kitchen with a barbecue for the evening fish, and nobody putting their towel on the next lounger.

You walk down to the beach in seven minutes: out of the house, six minutes to Vidigal square, and the beach is just below, on Avenida Niemeyer. Coming back is the same walk uphill — manageable for everyone, the owner's seventy-seven-year-old parents do it — and on shopping days or in real heat a moto-taxi will take you to the door for 5 to 10 reais. Uber and 99 drop you at the square.

The whole house rents from €450 a night in low season, and most of the year sits between €550 and €600, outside Christmas, New Year and Carnival. For eight guests that is €56 to €75 per person per night, or under €125 per bedroom. Minimum stay three nights. Book direct, no platform commission.