Caracas
Capital city
Santiago de León de Caracas
(From top, left to right) Plaza Venezuela; Plaza Francia; Parque Cristal in Los Palos Grandes; Nuestra Señora de Lourdes Church; Parque Central Complex
Flag Coat of arms
Nicknames:  La Sucursal del Cielo La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera La Odalisca del Ávila La Sultana del Ávila
Motto:  Seguid El Ejemplo Que Caracas Dio. (Then Follow the Example that Caracas Gave.)
Caracas Location in Venezuela and South America
Coordinates: 10°28′50″N 66°54′13″W / 10.48056°N 66.90361°W / 10.48056; -66.90361
Country	Venezuela
State	Capital District
Founded	25 July 1567
Founded by	Diego de Losada
Government
• Type	Mayor–council
• Body	Government of the Capital District
• Chief of Government	Jacqueline Faría
Area
• Capital city	433 km2 (167 sq mi)
• Metro	4,715.1 km2 (1,820.5 sq mi)
Elevation	900 m (3,000 ft)
Highest elevation	1,400 m (4,600 ft)
Lowest elevation	870 m (2,850 ft)
Population  (2022)
• Capital city	3,242,000
• Metro	8,956,813
Demonyms	Caraquenian (Spanish: caraqueño (m), caraqueña (f))
Time zone	UTC−4 (VET)
Postal codes[1]	1000–1090, 1209
Area code	212
ISO 3166 code	VE-A
Website	www.caracas.gob.ve
The area and population figures are the sum of the figures of the five municipalities (listed above) that make up the Distrito Metropolitano.

Caracas (/kəˈrækəs, -ˈrɑːk-/, Spanish: [kaˈɾakas]), officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas).^[2] Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern part of the country, within the Caracas Valley of the Venezuelan coastal mountain range (Cordillera de la Costa). The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2,200-meter-high (7,200 ft) mountain range, Cerro El Ávila; to the south there are more hills and mountains. The Metropolitan Region of Caracas has an estimated population of almost 5 million inhabitants.

The center of the city is Catedral, located near Bolívar Square,^[3] though some consider the center to be Plaza Venezuela, located in the Los Caobos area.^[2][4][5] Businesses in the city include service companies, banks, and malls. Caracas has a largely service-based economy, apart from some industrial activity in its metropolitan area.^[6] The Caracas Stock Exchange and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) are headquartered in Caracas. Empresas Polar is the largest private company in Venezuela. Caracas is also Venezuela's cultural capital, with many restaurants, theaters, museums, and shopping centers. Caracas has some of the tallest skyscrapers in Latin America,^[7] such as the Parque Central Towers.^[8] The Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas is one of the most important in South America.^[9]

History

Before the city was founded in 1567,^[10] the valley of Caracas was populated by indigenous peoples. Francisco Fajardo, the son of a Spanish captain and a Guaiqueri cacica, who came from Margarita, began establishing settlements in the area of La Guaira and the Caracas valley between 1555 and 1560. Fajardo attempted to establish a plantation in the valley in 1562 after these unsuccessful coastal towns, but it did not last long: it was destroyed by natives of the region led by Terepaima and Guaicaipuro.^[11][12] Fajardo's 1560 settlement was known as Hato de San Francisco, and another attempt in 1561 by Juan Rodríguez de Suárez was called Villa de San Francisco, and was also destroyed by the same native people.^[13] The eventual settlers of Caracas came from Coro, the German capital of their Klein-Venedig colony around the present-day coastal Colombia–Venezuela border; from the 1540s, the colony had been de facto controlled by Spaniards. Moving eastward from Coro, groups of Spanish settlers founded inland towns including Barquisimeto and Valencia before reaching the Caracas valley.^[11]

On 25 July 1567, Captain Diego de Losada laid the foundations of the city of Santiago de León de Caracas.^[10] De Losada had been commissioned to capture the valley, and was successful by splitting the natives into different groups to work with, then fighting and defeating each of them.^[13] The town was the closest to the coast of these new settlements, and the colonists retained a native workforce, which allowed a trade network to develop between Caracas, the interior, and Margarita; the towns further inland produced ample cotton products and beeswax, and Margarita was a rich source of pearls. The Caracas valley had a good environment for both agricultural and arable farming, which contributed to the system of commerce but meant that the town's population was initially sparse, as it was only large enough to support a few farms.^[11]

In 1577, Caracas became the capital of the Spanish Empire's Venezuela Province^[14] under the province's new governor, Juan de Pimentel (1576–1583).^[13] In the 1580s, Caraqueños started selling food to the Spanish soldiers in Cartagena, who often docked in the coastal city when collecting products from the empire in South America. Wheat was growing increasingly expensive in the Iberian Peninsula, and the Spanish profited from buying it from Caracas farmers. This cemented the city in the empire's trade circuit.^[11]

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the coast of Venezuela was frequently raided by pirates. With the coastal mountains of the Central Range as a barrier, Caracas was relatively immune to such attacks, compared to other Caribbean coastal settlements,^[11] but in 1595 the Preston–Somers expedition landed and around 200 English Privateers, including George Somers and Amyas Preston, crossed the mountains through a little-used pass while the town's defenders were guarding the more frequently used one. Encountering little resistance, the invaders sacked and set fire to the town after a failed ransom negotiation.^[15][16] The city managed to rebuild, using wheat profits and "a lot of sacrifice".^[13] In the 1620s, farmers in Caracas discovered that Cacao beans could be sold, first selling them to native people of Mexico and quickly growing across the Caribbean. The city became important in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, as well as moving from largely native slave labor to African slaves, the first of the Spanish colonies to become part of the slave trade. The city was successful and operated on cacao and slave trade until the 1650s, when an alhorra blight, the Mexican Inquisition of many of their Portuguese traders, and increased cacao production in Guayaquil greatly affected the market. This and the destructive 1641 earthquake put the city into decline, and they likely began illegally trading with the Dutch Empire, which Caraqueños later proved sympathetic to; by the 1670s, Caracas had a trading route through Curaçao.^[11]

In 1728, the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas was founded by the king, and the cacao business grew in importance. Caracas was made one of the three provinces of Nueva Granada, corresponding to Venezuela, in 1739. Over the next three decades the Viceroyalty was variously split, with Caracas province becoming the Venezuela province. Luis de Unzaga created the Captaincy General of Venezuela in the summer of 1777, with Caracas as the capital.^[13] Venezuela then attempted to become independent, first with the 1797 Gual and España conspiracy, based in Caracas,^[17] and then the successful 1811 Venezuelan Declaration of Independence.^[13] Caracas then came under worse luck: in 1812, an earthquake destroyed Caracas, a quarter of its population migrated in 1814, and the Venezuelan War of Independence continued until 24 June 1821, when Simón Bolívar defeated royalists in the Battle of Carabobo.^[13][18] Urban reforms only took place towards the end of the 19th century, under Antonio Guzmán Blanco: some landmarks were built, but the city remained distinctly colonial until the 1930s.^[13]

Caracas grew in size, population, and economic importance during Venezuela's oil boom in the early 20th century. In the 1950s, the metropolitan area of Gran Caracas was developed, and the city began an intensive modernization program, funding public buildings, which continued throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.^[13] Cultural landmarks, like the University City of Caracas, designed by modernist architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000;^[19] the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex were built, as well as the Caracas Metro and a developed downtown area. Urban development was rapid, leading to the growth of slums on the hillsides surrounding the new city. Much of the city development also fell into disrepair come the end of the 20th century, with the 1980s oil glut and political instability like the Caracazo, meaning maintenance can not be sustained. The economic and social problems persist throughout the capital and country, characterized as the Crisis in Venezuela. By 2017, Caracas was the most violent city in the world.^[13]

Coat of arms

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The coat of arms was adopted in 1591. Simón de Bolívar, an ancestor of Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar,^[20] had been named the first procurator general of the Venezuelan province in 1589. He served as the representative of Venezuela to the Spanish Crown, and vice versa.^[21] In 1591, de Bolívar introduced a petition to King Philip II for a coat of arms, which he granted by Royal Cedula on 4 September that year in San Lorenzo. The coat of arms represents the city's name with the red Santiago (St. James') cross. It originally depicted "a brown bear rampant on a field of silver, holding between its paws a golden shell with the red cross of Santiago; and its seal is a crown with five golden points".^[22] In the same act, the king declared Caracas as "The Most Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago de León de Caracas".^[23]

The anthem of the city is the Marcha a Caracas, written by the composer Tiero Pezzuti de Matteis with the lyrics by José Enrique Sarabia and approved in 1984.^[24]

Geography

Caracas is contained entirely within a valley of the Venezuelan Central Range, and is separated from the Caribbean coast by a roughly 15-kilometer (9 mi) expanse of El Ávila National Park. The valley is relatively small and quite irregular, and the altitude varies from between 870 and 1,043 meters (2,854 and 3,422 ft) above sea level; the historic center lies at about 900 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level.^[25] This, along with the rapid population growth, has profoundly influenced the urban development of the city.^[26] The most elevated point of the Capital District, wherein the city is located, is the Pico El Ávila, which rises to 2,159 meters (7,083 feet).^[25]

The main body of water in Caracas is the Guaire River, which flows across the city and empties into the Tuy River, which is also fed by the El Valle and San Pedro rivers, in addition to numerous streams which descend from El Ávila. The La Mariposa and Camatagua [es] reservoirs provide water to the city.^{[27][28][29][30]} The city is occasionally subject to earthquakes – notably in 1641 and 1967.

Geologically, Caracas was formed in the Late Cretaceous period, with much of the rest of the Caribbean, and sits on what is mostly metamorphic rock. Deformation of the land in this period formed the region.^[31]

Climate

Under the Köppen climate classification, Caracas has a tropical savanna climate (Aw), but also exhibits traits of a subtropical highland climate (Cfb) due to its elevated location within the Venezuelan Coastal Range (Maritime Andes). Caracas precipitation varies between 900 and 1,300 millimeters (35 and 51 inches) (annual), in the city proper to 2,000 millimeters (79 inches) in some parts of the Mountain range. While Caracas is within the tropics, due to its altitude temperatures are cooler compared to other locations with a typical tropical savanna climate. The annual average temperature is approximately 23.4 °C (74 °F), with the average of the coldest month (January) 21.7 °C (71 °F) and the average of the warmest month (May) 24.5 °C (76 °F), which gives a small annual thermal amplitude of 2.8 °C (5.0 °F).^[33]

In the months of December and January abundant fog may appear, in addition to a sudden nightly drop in temperature, until reaching 8 °C (46 °F).^[33] This peculiar weather is known by the natives of Caracas as the Pacheco. In addition, nightly temperatures at any time of the year are much (7 to 11 °C) lower than daytime highs and usually do not remain above 24 °C (75 °F), resulting in very pleasant evening temperatures. Hailstorms appear in Caracas, although only on rare occasions. Electrical storms are much more frequent, especially between June and October, due to the city being in a closed valley and the orographic action of Cerro El Ávila.^[34]

Hydrography

The hydrographic network of the city of Caracas is made up of the Guaire river basin which is a sub-basin of the Tuy river. This basin crosses the valley where the city is located from West to East (Las Adjuntas – Petare). It covers about 655 square kilometers, about 45 km. long and about 15 km. wide, has a rectangular shape. The basin is formed by the Caracas Valley, which is relatively high, narrow and long, surrounded by the high and steep Cordillera de la Costa, which runs parallel to the Litoral.

Among the characteristics of the hydrographic network associated with the city of Caracas is the high degree of contamination that the entire network presents in its lower part due to the fact that the courses of rivers and tributaries of the Guaire River have been used as collectors of the water system. sewers and sewers since its creation in 1874 during the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco until today. The level of contamination is such that it does not allow the maintenance of the life of the species that once populated the basin, and it has become extinct or has been restricted to the highest areas of the basin, mainly within the boundaries of the national park. Avila. Awareness for the recovery of the basin has recently begun, however, much remains to be done before results can be observed.

Among the main rivers and streams that make up the basin are in its northern slope: San Pedro River, Macarao River, Quebrada Caroata, Catuche River, Anauco River, Chacaito River, Tocome River, Caurimare River; on its southern slope we find that among the main tributaries are: El Valle river, Quebrada Baruta and Quebrada La Guairita. In the upper part of the basin there are two reservoirs with the purpose of supplying water to the western part of the city; These are the Macarao Dam and the La Mariposa Reservoir.

Urbanism

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Caracas shares commonalities with many Latin American cities: densely populated and with limited space because it is surrounded by mountains. Because of this, the city has grown vertically. A very striking aspect is the number of people living in substandard housing built on the mountain slopes surrounding the city. This type of housing is called ranchos, built improvised, without any official planning, with deficiencies and inadequate materials, marking a difference between those who live in the valley proper, 45% of the population in 25% of the urban area lives in these settlements.

The city center, developed around a small historic center, represents less than a quarter of the total area of the city, which has spread along the valley and has also been connected in recent years with satellite cities in the states of Miranda and La Guaira, creating a major metropolitan area known as Gran Caracas. The city's rapid population growth has resulted in increasing traffic congestion. To this end, the subway transportation system (Metro de Caracas) has been progressively expanded and is currently linked to the Los Teques Metro and, in the future, to the Guarenas-Guatire Metro system. The "Ezequiel Zamora" Central Railway System also links the communities of Charallave and Cúa de los Valles del Tuy with the subway transportation of the capital city.

Some areas of the city have a grid layout, either inherited from the colony or developed during the urban projects of the 20th century. Other areas, built on the mountain slopes, do not follow this pattern, but adapt to the irregularities of the terrain. These elevated areas enjoy a temperate temperature throughout the year.

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Caracas,_Venezuela
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