The first Latin American city to host the Olympic Games, Rio de Janeiro, received 66 votes compared to Madrid's 32 in the final round of voting by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) evaluation committee last week
The other two candidates which made it to the 2 October semi-finals were Tokyo and Chicago.
IOC President Jacques Rogge praised the high quality of the Rio bid, and stressed the fact that the Games would provide the city and country with a chance to "deliver their broader long-term aspirations for the future".
A lot of hope is being placed on the Games' ability to "hasten the transformation of Rio de Janeiro". The first Olympic Games on the South America continent will take place in a city with a reputation for high crime and violence, and where large city areas are outside state control, dominated by heavily armed drug gangs or militias.
While surveys have shown strong support among Rio residents for the Games, many remain sceptical and fear preparations could be crippled by corruption.
"There will have to be a major control of the resources by the international and Brazilian [Olympics] organisations. If not, we will face embarrassment," Marcos dos Santos, a trainer of blind athletes in Rio, told Reuters.
Many remember the unkept promises of the 2007 Pan-American Games in the city, which saw Rio fail to build most of the planned infrastructure.
Ignacio Cano, a sociologist, told Reuters that ahead of the Pan-American Games, police stepped up their violent raids of slums in an attempt to "clean" the city, while officials and the media clamped down on critics of the policy. Some fear the exercise will be repeated ahead of the 2016 Games.
Concerns have also been raised about the ability of the country's infrastructure to cope with hosting two major global sports events one after the other, with Brazil due to host the football World Cup in 2014.
According to the IOC, the competition venues will be clustered into four zones – Barra, Copacabana, Deodoro and Maracanã – and "connected by a high-performance transport ring". Of the 34 competition venues, 18 are already operational, eight will need to be revamped, seven will be set up temporary and nine will need to be constructed as "permanent legacy venues" over the next seven years.
