Rio de Janeiro is the capital of the state with the same name, located on the South-east of Brazil. It is one of Latin America’s main cities and Brazil’s most known and visited city, known as the “wonderful city”. It is the second largest metropolis, following São Paulo. A part of the city was classified as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2012.
Rio de Janeiro is one of the main economic and financial centres of the country, being internationally recognized for its different cultural and scenic benchmarks, as Pão de Açúcar, Christ the Redeemer, Copacabana, Ipanema or Barra da Tijuca. Rio’s Carnival is the biggest one and the most famous in the world.
The city also has the second largest GDP in Brazil and hosts the headquarters of two of the biggest Brazilian companies: Petrobras and Vale, in addition to the largest media company in Latin America, Globo. It also hosts several higher education institutions, notably the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The Guanabara Bay, where Rio de Janeiro was founded, was discovered by the Portuguese explorer Gaspar de Lemos on the 1st of January, 1502. The city of “São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro” was founded on the 1st of March, 1565 by a group of Portuguese men that included Estácio de Sá, after expelling the French who had occupied the region.
Rio de Janeiro was the Brazilian capital between 1621 and 1815; it was a colony of the Portuguese Empire between 1763 and 1815; and then it was a colony of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves until 1822. From this date until 1889 it was the capital of the Empire of Brazil and of Republic of the United States of Brazil until 1960, when the seat of government was transferred to Brasília.
