Rio de Janeiro Brazil

Rio de Janeiro [ʀi.u dʒʲi ʒʲɐnejɾu] is the second-largest city in Brazil and capital of the state of the same name after São Paulo. It is located on Guanabara Bay in the southeast of the country. The name is based on a mistake by the seafarer Gaspar de Lemos, who discovered the bay on January 1, 1502, and considered the mouth of a large river. The administrative urban area is home to some 6.4 million people (2013). The metropolitan region has 11.9 million inhabitants (2010). This makes Rio de Janeiro one of the world's mega- cities.

From 1815 to 1821, Rio de Janeiro was the capital of the kingdom of Portugal and Brazil and after the independence of Brazil from 1822 to 1960 was the capital of the country. After that, she resigned to Brasília, but remains the most important commercial and financial center in São Paulo. From 1808 to 1822, the city was also the seat of the Portuguese court, who had to flee to Brazil because of an attack by Napoleon Bonaparte. The inhabitants of the city are called Cariocas, according to a word from the language Tupiambá, belonging to Tupí-Guaraní, which means "White Man's Lodge".

Rio de Janeiro's landmark is the Sugar Loaf, the 38-meter-high Christ figure on the top of the Corcovado and the Copacabana beach, considered to be one of the most famous in the world. The city is also known for the annual carnival of Rio. The multicolored parade of the Sambashi is one of the biggest parades in the world.