Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro, commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th largest in the Americas, and 26th in the world.[5] The city was the capital of Brazil for nearly two centuries, from 1763 to 1815 during the Portuguese colonial era, 1815 to 1821 as the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves, and 1822 to 1960 as an independent nation. Rio is nicknamed the Cidade Maravilhosa or "Marvelous City."

Rio de Janeiro represents the second largest GDP in the country (and 30th largest in the world in 2008),estimated at about R$ 343 billion (IBGE/2008) (nearly US$ 201 billion), and is the headquarters of two major Brazilian companies – Petrobras and Vale, and major oil companies and telephony in Brazil, besides the largest conglomerate of media and communications companies in Latin America, the Globo Organizations. The home of many universities and institutes, it is the second largest center of research and development in Brazil, accounting for 17% of national scientific production – according to 2005 data. Rio de Janeiro is the most visited city in the southern hemisphere and is known for its natural settings, carnival celebrations, samba, Bossa Nova, balneario beaches such as Barra da Tijuca, Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon. Some of the most famous landmarks in addition to the beaches include the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer ('Cristo Redentor') atop Corcovado mountain, named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World; Sugarloaf mountain (Pão de Açúcar) with its cable car; the Sambódromo, a permanent grandstand-lined parade avenue which is used during Carnival; and Maracanã Stadium, one of the world's largest football stadiums. The 2016 Summer Olympics will take place in Rio de Janeiro, which will mark the first time a South American city hosts the event. Rio's Maracanã Stadium will also host the final match for 2014 FIFA World Cup.[11] Rio de Janeiro will also host World Youth Day in 2013

Geography
Rio de Janeiro is on a strip of Brazil's Atlantic coast, close to the Tropic of Capricorn, where the shoreline is oriented east–west. Facing largely south, the city was founded on an inlet of this stretch of the coast, Guanabara Bay (Baía de Guanabara), and its entrance is marked by a point of land called Sugar Loaf (Pão de Açúcar) – a "calling card" of the city.

The Centre (Centro), the core of Rio, lies on the plains of the western shore of Guanabara Bay. The greater portion of the city, commonly referred to as the North Zone (Zona Norte), extends to the northwest on plains composed of marine and continental sediments and on hills and several rocky mountains. The South Zone (Zona Sul) of the city, reaching the beaches fringing the open sea, is cut off from the Centre and from the North Zone by coastal mountains. These mountains and hills are offshoots of the Serra do Mar to the northwest, the ancient gneiss-granite mountain chain that forms the southern slopes of the Brazilian Highlands. The large West Zone (Zona Oeste), long cut off by the mountainous terrain, had been made accessible by new roads and tunnels by the end of the 20th century.

The population of the city of Rio de Janeiro, occupying an area of 1,182.3 square kilometres (456.5 sq mi),[15] is about 6,000,000.[16] The population of the greater metropolitan area is estimated at 11–13.5 million. It was Brazil's capital until 1960, when Brasília took its place. Residents of the city are known as cariocas. The official song of Rio is "Cidade Maravilhosa", by composer André Filho. own by Tamarion Johnson.

Climate
Rio has a tropical savanna climate that closely borders a tropical monsoon climate according to the Köppen climate classification, and is often characterized by long periods of heavy rain from December to March. In inland areas of the city, temperatures above 40 °C (104 °F) are common during the summer, though rarely for long periods, while maximum temperatures above 27 °C (81 °F) can occur on a monthly basis.

Along the coast, the breeze, blowing alternately onshore and offshore, moderates the temperature. Because of its geographic situation, the city is often reached, especially during autumn and winter, by cold fronts advancing from Antarctica, causing frequent weather changes. It is mostly in summer that strong showers provoke catastrophic floods and landslides. The mountainous areas register greater rainfall since they constitute a barrier to the humid wind that comes from the Atlantic.

It is said that the city had frosting sometime in its past, but it was never confirmed. Some areas within Rio de Janeiro state have snow grains and ice pellets with an even frequency (popularly called granizo, or 'hail', although it is in fact melted and refrozen snow falling in the form of a ball – true hail and graupel are way less common). These phenomena are definitely not rare or limited to a few regions, happening in the metropolitan area (including western suburbs of the city itself) at least one time in the 21st century, said to be approximately each two decades or less in some regions. In other areas there is true snowfall more than once in each century, most commonly in the cities of Resende and Itatiaia (in lower latitudes than Rio de Janeiro, but much higher altitudes), nation's coldest ones outside Southern Brazil, and the most propitious to frosting.

Roughly in the same suburbs corresponding to the March 2012 granizo fall (Nova Iguaçu–Campo Grande), there was a tornado-like phenomena in January 2011, for the first time in the region's recorded history, causing structural damage and lasting blackouts, but no fatalities. The World Meteorological Organization alerts Brazil, specially its Southeastern region, that events as the catastrophic January 2011 Rio de Janeiro floods and mudslides are not an isolated phenomena and that Brazil must be prepared for severe weather in the next years. "This (the early 2010s serial devastation in Rio de Janeiro's mesoregions Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro and Sul Fluminense) was not an isolated event. The events in Brazil confirms a global trend that storms tend to be increasingly strong and in places where it did not take place with the same force", said Rupakumar Kolli, WMO expert on climatological phenomena.

The average annual minimum temperature is 21 °C (70 °F), the average annual maximum temperature is 27 °C (81 °F), and the average annual temperature is 23 °C (73 °F). The average yearly precipitation is 1,175 mm. According to INMET, the minimum temperature recorded was 4.8 °C (41 °F) in July 1928, in the Campo dos Afonsos bairro (the Portuguese word for neighbourhood), and the absolute maximum was 44 °C (111 °F) in February. The lowest temperature ever registered in the 21st century was 8.1 °C (47 °F) in Vila Militar, July 2011. Temperatures below 10 °C (50 °F) are very rare in the city. The temperature varies according to elevation, distance from the coast, and type of vegetation. Winter brings mild temperatures and less rain than in the summer.

Average annual temperature of the sea is 23–24 °C (73–75 °F), from 22 °C (72 °F) in the period July–October to 26 °C (79 °F) in February and March.[24] The wettest and driest months tend to be December and August respectively.

History
Europeans first encountered Guanabara Bay on January 1, 1502 (hence Rio de Janeiro, "January River"), by a Portuguese expedition under explorer Gaspar de Lemos captain of a ship in Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet, or under Gonçalo Coelho. Allegedly the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci participated as observer at the invitation of King Manuel I in the same expedition. The region of Rio was inhabited by the Tupi, Puri, Botocudo and Maxakalí peoples.

In 1555, one of the islands of Guanabara Bay, now called Villegagnon Island, was occupied by 500 French colonists under the French admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon. Consequently, Villegagnon built Fort Coligny on the island when attempting to establish the France Antarctique colony.

The city of Rio de Janeiro proper was founded by the Portuguese on March 1, 1565 and was named São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, in honor of St. Sebastian, the saint who was the namesake and patron of the then Portuguese Monarch D. Sebastião. Rio de Janeiro was the name of Guanabara Bay. Until early in the 18th century, the city was threatened or invaded by several, mostly French, pirates and buccaneers, such as Jean-François Duclerc and René Duguay-Trouin.

In the late 17th century, still during the Sugar Era, the Bandeirantes found gold and diamonds in the neighboring captaincy of Minas Gerais, thus Rio de Janeiro became a much more practical port for exporting wealth (gold, precious stones, besides the sugar) than Salvador, Bahia, which is much farther to the northeast. And so in 1763, the colonial administration in Portuguese America was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. The city remained primarily a colonial capital until 1808, when the Portuguese royal family and most of the associated Lisbon nobles, fleeing from Napoleon's invasion of Portugal, moved to Rio de Janeiro. The kingdom's capital was transferred to the city, which, thus, became the only European capital outside of Europe. As there was no physical space or urban structure to accommodate hundreds of noblemen who arrived suddenly, many inhabitants were simply evicted from their homes.[30] There was a large influx of African slaves to Rio de Janeiro: in 1819, there were 145,000 slaves in the captaincy. In 1840, the number of slaves reached 220,000 people.

When Prince Pedro I proclaimed the independence of Brazil in 1822, he decided to keep Rio de Janeiro as the capital of his new empire. Rio continued as the capital of Brazil after 1889, when the monarchy was replaced by a republic. Until the early years of the 20th century, the city was largely limited to the neighborhood now known as the historic Downtown business district (see below), on the mouth of Guanabara Bay. The city's center of gravity began to shift south and west to the so-called Zona Sul (South Zone) in the early part of the 20th century, when the first tunnel was built under the mountains located between Botafogo and the neighborhood now known as Copacabana. Expansion of the city to the north and south was facilitated by the consolidation and electrification of Rio's streetcar transit system after 1905. Botafogo's natural beauty, combined with the fame of the Copacabana Palace Hotel, the luxury hotel of the Americas in the 1930s, helped Rio to gain the reputation it still holds today as a beach party town (though, this reputation has been somewhat tarnished in recent years by favela violence resulting from the narcotics trade). Plans for moving the nation's capital city to the territorial centre had been occasionally discussed, and when Juscelino Kubitschek was elected president in 1955, it was partially on the strength of promises to build a new capital.[34] Though many thought that it was just campaign rhetoric, Kubitschek managed to have Brasília built, at great cost, by 1960. On April 21 that year the capital of Brazil was officially moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília.

Between 1960 and 1975 Rio was a city-state under the name State of Guanabara (after the bay it borders). However, for administrative and political reasons, a presidential decree known as "The Fusion" removed the city's federative status and merged it with the State of Rio de Janeiro, the territory surrounding the city whose capital was Niterói, in 1975. Even today, some Cariocas advocate the return of municipal autonomy.

The city hosted the 2007 Pan American Games and will host the 2014 FIFA World Cup final. It was announced on October 2, 2009, that Rio would host the 2016 Olympic Games, beating the finalist competitors Chicago, Tokyo, and Madrid. The city will become the first South American city to host the event and the second Latin American city (after Mexico City in 1968) to host the Games. The city will host the World Youth Day in 2013 after having the World Youth Day in South America for a long time.

Culture and Contemporary Life
Rio de Janeiro is a main cultural hub in Brazil. Its architecture embraces churches and buildings dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, blending with the world renowned designs of the 20th century. Rio was home to the Portuguese Imperial family and capital of the country for many years, and was influenced by Portuguese, English, and French architecture.[citation needed]

Rio de Janeiro inherited from the past a strong cultural role. In the late 19th century, there were sessions held the first Brazilian film and since then, spread out several cycles of production, which eventually enter the cinema at the forefront Rio experimental and leadership national cinema. Currently, Rio brings together the main production centers of Brazilian television.

In Rio there are important cultural landmarks, like the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library in Portuguese), the seventh largest library in the world, its collections include over 9 million items; the Theatro do Rio, Built on principles of 20th century; the National Museum of Fine Arts; the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden; the Imperial Square; the Brazilian Academy of Letters; the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; and the Natural History Museum.

Tourism and attraction
Rio de Janeiro is Brazil's primary tourist attraction and resort. It receives the most visitors per year of any city in South America with 2.82 million international tourists a year. The city sports world-class hotels, approximately 80 kilometres of beachland, and the famous Corcovado and Sugarloaf mountains. While the city has in past had a thriving tourism sector, the industry entered a decline in the last quarter of the 20th century. Annual international airport arrivals dropped from 621,000 to 378,000 and average hotel occupancy dropped to 50% between 1985 and 1993.[citation needed] The fact that Brasília replaced Rio de Janeiro as the Brazilian capital and São Paulo as the country's commercial center has also been cited as a leading cause of the decline. Rio de Janeiro's government has since undertaken to modernise the city's economy, reduce its chronic social inequalities, and improve its commercial standing as part of an initiative for the regeneration of the tourism industry. The city is an important global LGBT destination, 1 million LGBTs and self-identified Queers visit the city of Rio de Janeiro each year.[90] The Rua Farme de Amoedo located in Ipanema, the city of Rio de Janeiro. The street and nearby beach are remarkable for their popularity in the LGBT community, being famous tourist spot.