Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is a city on Guanabara Bay in southeastern Brazil and the capital of the state of the same name. Its name, the River of January, comes from Portuguese sailors who entered the bay in January in the early 16th century and took it for the mouth of a river. Christ the Redeemer, a statue of reinforced concrete and soapstone, stands with open arms on the peak of Corcovado.

Estácio de Sá founded the city in 1565 on the shore between Sugarloaf Mountain and the hill of Cara de Cão. Gold from Minas Gerais passed through its port in the 18th century, and it became the capital of colonial Brazil in 1763. The Portuguese royal court moved there in the early 19th century, making Rio the seat of the whole Portuguese empire for more than a decade. It stayed the capital of Brazil until the government moved to Brasília in the 1960s. The city held the Summer Olympic Games in the 2010s, the first in South America.

Vale, the mining company known for its iron ore and nickel, has its headquarters in Rio. Grupo Globo produces the telenovelas and news of TV Globo at its studios in the west of the city. The Port of Rio de Janeiro on the bay handles containers, cars and steel.

Sugarloaf Mountain rises from the mouth of the bay, and a cable car has carried passengers to its top since the early 20th century. Copacabana Beach curves for several kilometers along the Atlantic, with a promenade of black and white stones laid in a wave pattern. The Maracanã Stadium was built for the football World Cup of the 1950s and hosted the World Cup final again in the 2010s. The Carnival of Rio, held before Lent, ends with the parades of the samba schools in the Sambadrome designed by Oscar Niemeyer.