This post is part of the Team Challenge between Connect Live 2019 Attendees, proposed by @ermest. Each member charged to write about a theme, but everyone contributed. In this post I describe the diversity of our country. This is one of the #teambrazil posts from this challenge, and you can find our main post here.
Since the first Brazilian Constitution, in 1891, there was a established need in our country to have a more central capital. The two main advantages for that were a better exploration of the countryside and better physical protection for the main buildings and institutions of the country. Despite having a law expliciting the central area for the construction of the capital, it wasn’t until April 21st 1960 that Brasília was declared our official Capital (with the hard work of my great-grandfather and many other brazilians, specially from the northeast region).
Although Brasília is only 59 years old, Rio de Janeiro had been the brazilian capital for almost 200 years so there are still a lot of people that believe to this day that Rio de Janeiro (or even São Paulo, that has never held the title) is the capital of our country. That’s precisely why I’m telling you a little bit about the wonders of Brasília!
For starters, Brasília is an architectural temple of our country, being declared a Mankind Cultural Heritage by Unesco in 1987. The design, created by urban planner Lucio Costa and called “The Pilot Plan”, is based on an airplane, housing the main official federal buildings in the plane’s fuselage (called Monumental Axis) and a more city-like area in the north and south wings (called Residential Axis).
The Monumental Axis is filled with modern buildings designed by Oscar Niemayer, one of the brightest architects in the world.The list includes the Cathedral of Brasília, the National Congress of Brazil, the Palácio do Planalto (official workplace of the president), the National Library and many more.I could seriously go on and on about the architectural history of this city, but I’ll leave the details for you to find out in your next trip to Brazil (that I hope will have at least a few days reserved for getting to know our capital).
Trivia time: the average temperatures in Brasília range between 19ºC (66ºF) in winter time to 23ºC (73ºF) in summer, and relative humidity can drop to less than 50% in the winter. All these numbers mean one thing: It is HOT. And it can be very dry, specially in the winter. The main reason for that is the region where Brasília lies, called “Cerrado”, a savanna ecoregion. It is thanks to the artificial lake Paranoá, created with barrages built in the Paranoá River just around the Pilot Plan, that our capital maintains better conditions of humidity through the year (although the dry period can be really tough sometimes).
The Cerrado area outside of Brasilia offers one last wonder for the tourists that don’t want to see only the urban and official jewels of the capital: the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park. 230km south of the Capital, in the State of Goias, lies one of the most beautiful parks in Brazil, a country known for its natural beauty. Filled with trails and wonderful waterfalls, the park is a very popular destination among nature lovers and can be a perfect excuse to extend your visit to our national capital.
I really hope you guys enjoy the text and that you can come to visit our capital one day, for the nature, for the history, for the architecture or for a little bit of everything!
