Rio de Janeiro

Guanabara Bay was Tupinambá country when Portuguese navigators reached it in January 1502 and called it the River of January. The French got there first with a settlement: Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon founded "France Antarctique" on an island in the bay in 1555, and Estácio de Sá founded the Portuguese city on 1 March 1565 to drive them out, which was done by 1567.

The gold rush in Minas Gerais made Rio's fortune. Gold came down the mountains through Paraty and later along a direct road to Rio, and in 1763 the colonial capital moved here from Salvador. The city also became one of the largest ports of the Atlantic slave trade: hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans landed at the Valongo Wharf, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1808 the Portuguese royal family fled Napoleon and set up court in Rio, so that for thirteen years a colony served as the seat of a European empire; after independence the city stayed the capital of the empire, and Pedro II built his summer palace in the hills at Petrópolis. In the 19th century coffee plantations worked by enslaved people spread through the Paraíba valley.

Rio remained the capital of the republic until Brasília took over in 1960. The city then became the state of Guanabara until its merger with the surrounding state of Rio de Janeiro in 1975. It hosted the 2014 World Cup final and the 2016 Olympic Games, and in 2022 floods and landslides in Petrópolis killed more than 200 people.

People from the city are cariocas and those from the state fluminenses, and the carioca self-image — relaxed, witty, informal, lived outdoors — is a national stereotype. Samba took shape in the early 20th century in the Afro-Brazilian neighbourhoods around the port and Praça Onze, known as Little Africa, and in the hillside communities of the north; the samba schools of Mangueira, Portela, Salgueiro and Beija-Flor now compete each Carnival in the Sambadrome, designed by Oscar Niemeyer, while hundreds of street blocos parade through the city. Bossa nova came from middle-class Zona Sul apartments in the late 1950s, and "The Girl from Ipanema" by Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes made the neighbourhood world-famous. Funk carioca, from the favelas, is the city's dominant party music today.

Football splits the city between Flamengo, Brazil's most-supported club, Fluminense, Vasco da Gama and Botafogo, and the Fla–Flu derby at the Maracanã is one of the sport's great fixtures. New Year's Eve on Copacabana draws crowds dressed in white, and some still throw flowers into the sea for Iemanjá, the sea goddess of Candomblé and Umbanda — a religion that took shape in Rio state in the early 20th century. Beach etiquette is its own code: each stretch of sand, measured by lifeguard posts, has its own crowd.

The state has about 16 million people, and around 12 million of them live in greater Rio. The city itself has about 6.2 million; across the bay lies Niterói, and the large working-class municipalities of São Gonçalo, Duque de Caxias and Nova Iguaçu make up much of the metropolis. The gap between the beachside Zona Sul and the northern suburbs and the Baixada Fluminense is wide, and long bus and train commutes are the norm for many workers.

Oil is the backbone of the economy: Petrobras has its headquarters in Rio, the offshore Campos and pre-salt fields are worked from Macaé, and royalties fund state and city budgets. Steel at Volta Redonda, shipbuilding, TV Globo and the media industry, finance and tourism complete the picture.

Hundreds of favelas climb the hills among and beyond the richer districts, from Rocinha, the most populous in the city, to the Maré complex near the airport. Many are dominated by drug factions such as the Comando Vermelho or by militias formed by off-duty and serving police and other security agents, and the state's security policy — including the police pacification units begun in 2008 — is a constant political issue. The day starts early for commuters and ends late on the beaches and in the botecos, the corner bars where Rio socialises over cold beer.

Rio claims feijoada as its own, and Saturday lunch of black beans with pork, rice, couve (sautéed collard greens), farofa and orange slices is a city ritual, often with live samba. The boteco kitchen is the other pillar: bolinhos de bacalhau (salt-cod fritters), pastéis (fried pastries), fried sardines and draught chope served ice-cold. Filé Oswaldo Aranha, a steak topped with fried garlic and served with rice, farofa and fried potatoes, was named after a politician who ordered it at a Rio restaurant, and galeto, spit-roasted young chicken, has its own dedicated restaurants.

The beach has its own menu, carried across the sand by vendors: Biscoito Globo, airy ring-shaped cassava-starch crackers, washed down with iced mate tea, plus grilled cheese on a stick, corn and cold coconut water. Açaí here is the sweet, frozen version, served in a bowl with granola and banana, and juice bars on almost every corner blend tropical fruit.

Beyond the city, Paraty is known for cachaça, the sugar-cane spirit used in the caipirinha, and still has distilleries in the hills behind the town. Petrópolis has a long brewing tradition — the Bohemia brand was founded there in the 19th century — and the mountain towns serve trout and hearty European-style food.

Rio de Janeiro city is a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape of granite peaks, forest and bay. The cable car climbs Sugarloaf in two stages from Urca; the Christ the Redeemer statue stands on Corcovado, reached by cog railway through Tijuca National Park, one of the largest urban forests in the world. Below lie the beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, the Arpoador rocks at sunset, the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas and the Botanical Garden founded in 1808. In the old centre are the Theatro Municipal, the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura library, the Lapa arches and the tiled Selarón Steps up to hilly Santa Teresa; the revived port has the Museum of Tomorrow and the Valongo Wharf, and the Maracanã stadium lies to the north. Across the bay, Niemeyer's saucer-shaped Contemporary Art Museum looks back at the city from Niterói.

Inland, Petrópolis keeps the Imperial Museum in Pedro II's palace, the cathedral with the imperial tombs and the Quitandinha palace, and the Serra dos Órgãos National Park near Teresópolis has the rock finger of Dedo de Deus. Further west, Itatiaia became Brazil's first national park in 1937.

East along the Costa do Sol, Búzios has more than twenty beaches around its peninsula, with the turquoise water of Arraial do Cabo and the dunes of Cabo Frio nearby. To the west, the Costa Verde runs past the bay of Angra dos Reis to Ilha Grande, a former prison island, where trails cross the forest to Lopes Mendes beach and the Pico do Papagaio, and on to Paraty, whose colonial centre and the surrounding Atlantic Forest are a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site.