The basic structure of Brasilia was completed in just four years, from 1956 to 1960, under the leadership of President Juscelino Kubitschek, with the slogan "fifty years of progress in five", and the city is in a sense a memorial to him. The cathedral has six columns representing two hands reaching up to almighty heaven.
The city is designed in the shape of a giant bird or airplane, with various separated zones assigned for specific functions such as housing, commerce, hospitals and banking. Running down the center of the "airplane's" fuselage is the thoroughfare called the Eixo Monumental ("Monumental Axis") and at one end lay the government buildings. The arched "wings" are residential zones, with several rows of medium-rise apartment blocks with small commercial districts. The intersection is the commercial and cultural hub, with stores, hotels, and the cathedral. A huge artificial lake serves the city as both a leisure area and to diminish the effects of low humidity in drier months (see Climate below).
Forty-eight years after its creation (1960), Brasilia is still developing a culture of its own. The city has often been criticized as a failed utopia where rationalized modernist planning has buried the human element. Yet Brazilians are quite proud of their capital, embodying a vision of a future when Brazil is no longer considered merely a "developing" country.
The original planned area (called Plano Piloto) is home to about 400,000 inhabitants, most of the city's upper class. The so-called satellite cities (15 to 40 kilometres away concentrate the remainder of the 2.2 million inhabitants of this great city of Brasília (Distrito Federal).
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Brasilia
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Brasilia - updated May 2024
SAVE up to 75% on Last Minute deals! Search for discount Brasilia hotels, motels, apartments, hostels, guest accommodations and vacation resorts. Book now and pay at the hotel. Instant email confirmation!
Brasilia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
