17 Impossibly Colorful Cities You’ll Want To Visit Immediately

The word pretty isn’t often associated with the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro. But gazing across the hills toward the notorious Santa Maria favela, you might be pleasantly surprised by the burst of colors—the result of a recent social art project launched by Dutch design duo Haas&Hahn.

“We chose to bring color to a neighborhood that did not have a tradition of that,” says Dre Urhahn, who, with his partner Jeroen Koolhaas, enlisted community members to view their walls as a blank canvas teeming with creative possibilities. “We did not just want to bring something to the neighborhood, but to let something grow out of the inspiration that we found there.”
So insanely pretty.