Brasilia

Brasilia is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country's center-western region. It was founded by President Juscelino Kubitschek on April 21, 1960, to serve as the new national capital. Brasilia is estimated to be Brazil's third-most populous city. Among major Latin American cities, it has the highest GDP per capita.

Brasilia was a planned city developed by Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and Joaquim Cardozo in 1956 in a scheme to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more central location. The landscape architect was Roberto Burle Marx. The city's design divides it into numbered blocks as well as sectors for specified activities, such as the Hotel Sector, the Banking Sector, and the Embassy Sector. Brasilia was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 due to its modernist architecture and uniquely artistic urban planning. It was named "City of Design" by UNESCO in October 2017 and has been part of the Creative Cities Network since then.

All three branches of Brazil's federal government are centered in the city: executive, legislative and judiciary. Brasilia also hosts 124 foreign embassies. The city's international airport connects it to all other major Brazilian cities and some international destinations, and it is the third-busiest airport in Brazil. It was one of the main host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and hosted some of the football matches during the 2016 Summer Olympics; it also hosted the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup.

The city has a unique status in Brazil, as it is an administrative division rather than a legal municipality like other cities in Brazil. Although Brasilia is used as a synonym for the Federal District through synecdoche, the Federal District is composed of 31 administrative regions, only one of which is the area of the originally planned city, also called Plano Piloto. The rest of the Federal District is considered by IBGE to make up Brasilia's metro area.

The city is located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country's center-western region.

Paranoá Lake, a large artificial lake, was built to increase the amount of water available and to maintain the region's humidity. It has a marina, and hosts wakeboarders and windsurfers. Diving can also be practiced and one of the main attractions is Vila Amaury, an old village submerged in the lake. This is where the first construction workers of Brasilia used to live.

Brasilia has a tropical savanna climate (Aw, according to the Köppen climate classification), milder due to the elevation and with two distinct seasons: the rainy season, from October to April, and the dry season, from May to September. The average temperature is 21.0 °C (69.8 °F). September, at the end of the dry season, has the highest average maximum temperature, 28.4 °C (83.1 °F), and July has major and minor lower maximum average temperature, of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) and 12.9 °C (55.2 °F), respectively. Average temperatures from September through March are a consistent 22 °C (72 °F). With 241.5 mm (9.5 in), December is the month with the highest rainfall of the year, while June is the lowest, with only 4.9 mm (0.2 in).

According to Brazilian National Institute of Meteorology (INMET), the record low temperature was 1.6 °C (34.9 °F) on July 18, 1975, and the record high was 36.4 °C (97.5 °F) on October 18, 2015 and October 8, 2020. The highest accumulated rainfall in 24 hours was 132.8 mm (5.2 in) on November 15, 1963.