Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

 

 

It is the country's cultural and tourist centre, famed for its broad, sandy beaches (notably Copacabana, fronting on the Atlantic Ocean); its 19th-century palaces (now occupied by government offices) and modern office buildings; the tree-lined main thoroughfare, Avenida Rio Branco, with its coloured mosaic pavements; and the annual pre-Lenten carnival, marked by several days of wild street celebrations.

 

 

While Rio is the nation's largest passenger port, it is exceeded by Santos, the great coffee port, as an outlet for exports. Nor can it compete as a manufacturing centre with Sao Paulo, the hub of Brazilian industrial and commercial activity. Rio has a tropical climate marked by humid summers, when the well-to-do cariocas (citizens of Rio) prefer to live in the nearby hill towns of Petrópolis and Teresópolis.

 

 

The Portuguese discovered Guanabara Bay in January, 1502; believing it to be an estuary, they named it 'River of January'. The city was founded in 1567. It became the seat of the Portuguese viceroy in 1763, and in 1822 the capital of the Brazilian empire, which became a republic in 1889.

 

 

In 1960, the seat of government was theoretically transferred to Brasilia, a new city being built from the ground up in the Brazilian highlands, near the country's geographical centre.