With 1,000 days to go until the start of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the progress being made at the Barra Olympic Park can now be observed from a privileged position.

The Rio city government today inaugurated an observation tower that offers views across the site that will be the focus of the world when the first Olympic and Paralympic Games in South America are staged.

Barra Olympic Park will be the heart of the Games, hosting 10 Olympic sports and 10 Paralympic sports in nine venues. After the Games it will form part of the Olympic Training Centre, a collection of state-of-the-art facilities for training and elite-level competition.

Saturday 9 November will mark 1,000 days until the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony and to celebrate this milestone the city government invited a special group of visitors to the observation tower on Friday.

Rio 2016 President Carlos Nuzman, State Governor Sergio Cabral, Sports Ministry Executive Secretary Luis Fernandes and the President of the Olympic Public Authority (APO), General Fernando Azevedo e Silva, joined a selection of local people who work towards the development of Rio. The group was greeted by City Mayor Eduardo Paes and the President of the Municipal Olympic Company (EOM), Maria Silvia Bastos Marques, at the Park.

Standing nine metres high, the tower enabled the visitors to see some important advances in the works, like the first phase of construction of the Olympic Tennis Centre, which started at the end of October.

They also had a good view of the more advanced works of the Olympic Halls 1-3 (which will host basketball, judo, wrestling, taekwondo and fencing during the Olympic Games) and the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) and Main Press Centre (MPC), all of which are already in the foundation construction phase.

In 2014, the last three sport venues in the Park will start to be erected: the Velodrome, Aquatics Stadium and Olympic Hall 4 (the handball arena).

The Maria Lenk Aquatic Centre and Rio Olympic Arena, which were constructed for the 2007 Pan-American Games, will undergo some adjustments and also be used in the Olympic Games.

Work at the Barra Olympic Park started in July 2012 with the removal of the old Jacarepaguá Racetrack, part of which was used in the construction of the observation tower. Infrastructure works – such as water, sewage and electricity networks – are on schedule, and the earthworks are in the final phases.

In the future, the tower will form part of a guided tour for students, Brazilian and foreign visitors, public authorities and Rio’s inhabitants in general.