Caracas

Caracas
Coordinates: 10 ° 30 ′ N , 66 ° 55 ′ W Caracas on Venezuela map	Caracas
	Caracas
Basic data
Country	Venezuela
Capital District & State	Distrito Capital & Miranda
City foundation	July 25, 1567
Residents	1,943,901
- in the metropolitan area	2,923,959
	City insignia
Detailed data
surface	2050 km 2
Population density	1026 inhabitants / km 2
height	920 m
City structure	5 Municipios
Waters	Río Cabriales, Río Caruao
Post Code	1010-A
prefix	(+58) 212
Time zone	UTC -4: 00
City Presidency	Antonio Ledezma Díaz
Website	www.caracas.gob.ve
	The east of Caracas in front of the Ávila

Caracas [ kaˈɾakas ] (officially Santiago de León de Caracas ) is the capital and largest city of Venezuela . It is considered the country's cultural and economic center. In German, the name is often incorrectly emphasized on the first syllable: [ ˈkaʀakas ].

With 2.1 million inhabitants in the actual urban area and 2.082 million (2015) in the agglomeration , Caracas is the largest urban agglomeration in Venezuela.

In a ranking of cities according to their quality of life , Caracas was ranked 193rd out of 231 cities worldwide in 2018.

geography

Caracas is located in the north of Venezuela at an altitude of 760–920 m in the Caracas Valley , which belongs to the coastal mountains (Cordillera de la Costa) Venezuela. The valley is separated from the Caribbean Sea , about 10 km as the crow flies from the city center , by the Ávila mountain range, which is over 2000 m high . The sea and airport of Caracas are located in the coastal towns of La Guaira and Maiquetía , which can be reached via a 20 km long motorway that is endangered by earthquake activities. One of the motorway bridges was destroyed in 2006, but was replaced within a year by a new building elsewhere.

The climate is tropical with an average annual temperature of 22.5 ° C and annual rainfall between 900 and 1300 mm.

Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Caracas

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Max. Temperature ( ° C )	25.5	26.4	27.8	28.3	27.6	26.8	26.4	27.3	27.7	27.2	26.6	25.5	O	26.9
Min. Temperature (° C)	14.8	15.0	15.7	17.1	18.2	18.0	17.4	17.4	17.4	17.3	16.7	15.9	O	16.7

Precipitation ( mm )	22nd	11	13	33	81	104	103	111	103	110	90	44	Σ	825

Hours of sunshine ( h / d )	8.0	8.6	8.7	6.8	6.8	7.0	7.6	7.9	7.7	7.7	7.6	7.2	O	7.6

Rainy days ( d )	4th	3	2	4th	8th	13	13	11	11	11	8th	6th	Σ	94

Humidity ( % )	78	75	73	75	79	81	81	80	79	81	84	81	O	78.9

Source: missing

history

Caracas Cathedral

Ibrahim Al-Ibrahim Mosque

Plaza Venezuela

Casa del Libertador ( Simón Bolívar's birthplace)

Panteón Nacional de Venezuela

Columbus was the first European to reach the coast of Caracas in 1498. A small colony emerged there , which Charles V bequeathed to the merchant Welser of Augsburg as compensation for a loan in 1526 as a fiefdom from the Crown of Castile . The Welser, however, only kept the property until 1546.

The actual city was founded in 1567 by the Spanish conqueror Diego de Losada under the original name Santiago de León de Carácas . Caracas was later the capital of a Spanish captaincy general and the seat of the governor .

Around 1750 the city flourished with the increasing export of cocoa .

During the War of Independence, the city was conquered by Spain on July 29, 1811 and again in 1814, after it was liberated by Bolívar . It was liberated again in 1821 and Caracas was then part of the Republic of Greater Colombia until 1831 , when it helped to form the Republic of Venezuela on November 17, 1831 , of which it became the capital.

The city has been repeatedly hit by earthquakes. It suffered severe damage as early as 1755. It was completely destroyed by an earthquake on March 26, 1812, described by Alexander von Humboldt ; around 12,000 people were killed. After that, the city was regularly rebuilt, but mostly without the destroyed colonial buildings, so that Caracas only houses a few of these contemporary witnesses. The cathedral, a five-aisled basilica from 1614 with a facade from 1710 to 1713, has been preserved.

In 1873 Caracas only had 60,010 inhabitants, but in 1883 it had 70,198 inhabitants. The industry was not very developed at that time, but there were already numerous educational institutions. A 45 km long aqueduct supplied the city. By 1904 the population rose to 90,000.

From 1930 the oil rush caused the city to experience a population explosion .

Today Caracas is a very dangerous city, the crime rates are extremely high. With 120 murders per 100,000 inhabitants annually (280 times as many as in Austria), Caracas has the highest murder rate in the world relative to the number of inhabitants .

On September 1, 2016, around one million demonstrators critical of the government took to the streets in Caracas and demanded the removal of the socialist President Nicolás Maduro . It was the largest political rally in Venezuela in decades.

economy

Caracas is the financial and industrial center of Venezuela. Its most important branches of industry are the textile, leather, machine, automobile (e.g. MMC Automotriz ) and metal industries. The chemical industry, the food industry and the international network of petroleum refineries of " Petroleos de Venezuela " (PDVSA) also play an important role politically and economically. Caracas is the seat of the country's only stock exchange , the Bolsa de Valores de Caracas .

According to the British weekly The Economist , Caracas was the 6th most expensive city in the world in 2014; bread , for example, cost around 11 dollars per kilogram.

Education

university

The Central University of Venezuela (Universidad Central), founded in 1721, is the largest university in Venezuela. Your campus was designed by the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and houses many contemporary works of art in 40 buildings (including by Alexander Calder , Victor Vasarely , Fernand Léger , Jean Arp and Henri Laurens ). The university campus was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000 .

The Universidad Simón Bolívar , founded on July 18, 1967, has over 13,000 students. Your campus has a size of 3,489,000 m².

The Universidad Santa María is the first private university in Venezuela. It is based in the capital Caracas. The university was founded on the initiative of Lola Fuenmayor by government decree of October 13, 1953.

The Universidad Nacional Experimental de la Gran Caracas has existed since 2010 .

traffic

metro

Caracas has a metro that opened in 1983 and consists of four lines. In addition, there are the underground lines of Metrobus (bus company that works together with the underground) and a system of cable cars ( Metrocable ; see below).

The metro network is currently 54.1 kilometers long and consists of four lines with 47 stations.

line	colour	route	opening	length	Train stations
1	red	Propatria ↔ Palo Verde	1983	20.4 km	22nd
2	green	El Silencio ↔ Zoológico El Silencio ↔ Las Adjuntas	1987	17.8 km	13
3	blue	Plaza Venezuela ↔ La Rinconada	1994	10.4 km	9
4th	yellow	Capuchinos ↔ Zona Rental	2006	5.5 km	5

For several decades, various railway models had been proposed as examples and inspiration for building a subway. This also included a proposal that took up the Wuppertal suspension railway . The construction of a suspension railway over the main river of Caracas, the Rio Guaire, was rejected.

The construction of the metro began in 1978, line 1 began operating on a first section in 1983 and was completed by 1989. Line 2 followed in 1987/88, Line 3 followed from 1994 to 2010. Line 4 was built as an extension of Line 2 in its current section from 2001 to 2006, an extension to the east under the name Line 5 is in the construction phase (status: 2016 ).

Cable car

The Caracas Metrocable was opened in 2010 to connect the districts in the mountainous areas to the metro. The further expansion with a distance of one kilometer was delayed in early 2017 due to Venezuela's payment problems; the manufacturer Doppelmayr only wanted to deliver against prepayment.

railroad

There is a double-track regional railway line from the La Rinconada terminus via Charallave ( Charallave Norte and Charallave Sur stations ) to Cúa .

Airports

The Caracas airport to the city on the coast in north Maiquetía is an approximately 20 km long highway that the Avila mountain range , connected by crosses with the city center.

Personalities

In 1799, Alexander von Humboldt toured Venezuela with his companion Aimé Bonpland and also visited Caracas. The first documented ascent of the 2,250 m high summit of Ávila was undertaken by them. Today this is the most popular local recreation area for capital city dwellers. If visibility is good, it is worth taking a trip to the huge nature reserve with the Teleférico (cable car).

In the 1950s, actor Bud Spencer was working at an automobile factory in Caracas. In 1959 he left the city and returned to Rome .

sons and daughters of the town

Parque del Este

The sons and daughters of the city of Caracas include the President of Venezuela since 2013 Nicolás Maduro (* 1962), independence fighter Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), actress Majandra Delfino (* 1981), philosopher Andrés Bello (1781–1865), tennis player Garbiñe Muguruza (* 1993) and Miss Universe 2008, Dayana Mendoza (* 1986).