This thesis brings to light stories that were previously silent, forgotten, underestimated or seen from new perspectives about the LGBTI+ scene in Rio de Janeiro from the 1950s onwards, when homosexuals (males) began to be morenoticed (and not just pointed out) in the city s public space, at the time of the costume contests at the carnival balls in Praça Tiradentes. From then on, we sought to map the main living spaces, events, customs, tastes and cultural codes of this community that made Rio a very gay metropolis from the 1950s to the 1980s, at the forefront of the topic in Brazil. All of this based on testimonies from prominent personalities, activist pioneers, but also anonymous characters whose stories are equally representative, in addition to abundant documentation including that of the normative press and the nascent gay press. In the midst of a hostile, extremely moralistic and homophobic context, including persecution and various stigmas, such testimonies show the capacity for resistance and overcoming of gays, lesbians, transvestites, transformers, transsexuals and bisexuals from Rio or who chose the city to live. A population that managed, despite everything, to fervently exercise its way of being during this period and is alive to tell and celebrate submerged details of a history that until then were at risk of being erased.