RIO DE JANEIRO TRAVEL GUIDE
Rio de Janeiro is the second major city of Brazil, behind only São Paulo. The city is
capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The city was once the capital of Brazil (1763–1960)
and of the Portuguese Empire (1808–1821). Commonly known as just Rio, the city is
also nicknamed A Cidade Maravilhosa - "The Marvelous City".
music, hotel-lined tourist beaches, such as Copacabana and Ipanema, paved with
decorated black and cream swirl pattern mosaics.
Rio also boasts the two world's largest forests inside an urban area. The first is the forest
in Parque Estadual da Pedra Branca, or White Stone State Park. The second, almost
connected to the first, is the famous Floresta da Tijuca, or 'Tijuca Forest'.
Guanabara Bay was reached by Portuguese explorers in an expedition led by Portuguese
explorer Gaspar de Lemos on January 20, 1502; hence Rio de Janeiro, "January River".
There is a legend that the mariners named the place thus because they thought the
mouth of the bay was actually the mouth of a river, but no experienced sailor would make
that mistake. At the time, river was the general word for any large body of water.
An unofficial European presence in the area began not long after. In 1519 when
Ferdinand Magellan resupplied his ships in the bay, French smugglers were already
using the bay as a post for smuggling brazilwood. When French naval officer Nicolas
Durand de Villegaignon arrived in 1555 with a fleet of two ships and 600 soldiers and
colonists, he founded the first permanent Europe settlement in the area. The colony
was referred to as "France Antarctique". The colonists consisted of mainly French
Huguenots and Swiss Calvinists. Villegaignon left in 1557 after disputes with some of the colonists.
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