The capital of Brazil is not Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo… the capital of brazil is Brasilia! Brasilia was designed and built in 1960.
The city is located atop the Brazilian highlands in the country’s center-western region. It was founded on April 21, 1960, to serve as the new national capital. Brasília is estimated to be Brazil’s 3rd most populous city. Among major Latin American cities, Brasília has the highest GDP per capita.
Brasília was planned and developed by Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and Joaquim Cardozo in 1956 to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more central location. The landscape architect was Roberto Burle Marx.
The city’s design divides it into numbered blocks as well as sectors for specified activities, such as the Hotel Sector, the Banking Sector and the Embassy Sector. Brasília was chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its modernist architecture and uniquely artistic urban planning. It has also been named “City of Design” by UNESCO in October 2017 and has been part of the Creative Cities Network since then. All three branches of Brazil’s federal government are centered in the city: executive, legislative, and judiciary. Brasília also hosts 124 foreign embassies.
The city’s international airport connects it to all other major Brazilian cities and many international destinations, and is the third busiest airport in Brazil. Brasília is the most populous Portuguese-speaking capital city. It was one of the main host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and hosted some of the football matches during the 2016 Summer Olympic Games; it also hosted the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup.
The city has a unique status in Brazil, as it is an administrative division rather than a legal municipality like other cities in Brazil. Although Brasília is used as a synonym for the Federal District through synecdoche, the Federal District is composed of 31 administrative regions, only one of which is the area of the originally planned city, also called Plano Piloto. The rest of the Federal District is considered by IBGE to make up Brasília’s metro area.