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municipality of Pernambuco state, Brazil
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Recife ( riss-EE-fee, -fə; Brazilian Portuguese: [ʁeˈsifi] ⓘ) is the state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is the largest urban area in both the North and the Northeast Region of Brazil. It is the largest city in Pernambuco state, and the fourth-largest urban area in all of Brazil; the metro population of the city of Recife was 3,726,974 in 2022. Recife was founded in 1537, serving as the main harbor of the Captaincy of Pernambuco—known for its large-scale production of sugar cane. At one point, it was known as Mauritsstad, when it served as the capital city of the 17th century colony of New Holland of Dutch Brazil (founded by the Dutch West India Company). Situated at the confluence of the Beberibe and Capibaribe rivers, before they drain into the South Atlantic Ocean, Recife is a major seaport along the Brazilian Atlantic coast. Its name is an allusion to the stone reefs that are present offshore. Together with the urban presence of the Beberibe and Capibaribe rivers and their tributaries, the many additional unique, small islands—and more than 50 bridges linking them throughout the city—create a distinct maritime or "riviera" atmosphere, leading to Recife being known as the "Venice of Brazil".
As of 2010, Recife has maintained the highest HDI of any state capital in Northeastern Brazil, and the second-highest of the entire Northern and Northeastern regions (second only to Palmas). However, the city also is known as having some of the highest rates of gun violence in the entire country, despite also being considered the "safest state capital" in the Northeast. Although Recife often has a consistently higher crime rate than Brazil's South Region, it typically has a much lower crime rate than other regional capitals—such as Salvador or São Luís. Nonetheless, crime rose nearly 440% in 2015. The waters along the coastline are also considered to be among the most dangerous "on earth", as there have been many recorded shark attacks on swimmers at the beaches, including fatal incidents.
The Metropolitan Region of Recife is the main industrial zone of the State of Pernambuco, major products are those derived from cane (sugar and ethanol), motor vehicles, ships, oil platforms, electronics, software, and others. With fiscal incentives by the government, many industrial companies were started in the 1970s and 1980s. Recife has a tradition of being the most important commercial hub of the North/Northeastern region of Brazil, with more than 52,500 business enterprises in Recife plus 32,500 in the Metro Area, totaling more than 85,000.
A combination of a large supply of labor and significant private investments turned Recife into Brazil's second largest medical hub (the first being São Paulo); modern hospitals with state-of-the-art equipment receive patients from several neighbouring States.
Recife stands out as a major tourist site within the Brazilian Northeast, known for the city itself, its beaches and for its historical sites, with many places of significance dating back to both the Portuguese and the Dutch colonies in the region. The beach of Porto de Galinhas, located 60 kilometers (37 mi) south of the city, has been repeatedly awarded the title of best beach in Brazil and has drawn many tourists. The Historic Centre of Olinda, 7 kilometers (4.3 mi) north of the city, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, and both cities' Brazilian Carnival are among the world's most famous. According to The Herald, Recife has the biggest consumption of whisky around the world.
The city is an education hub, and home to the Federal University of Pernambuco, the largest university in Pernambuco. Several Brazilian historical figures, such as the poet and abolitionist Castro Alves, moved to Recife for their studies. Recife and Natal are the only Brazilian cities with direct flights to the islands of Fernando de Noronha, a World Heritage Site.
Recife was one of the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and previously hosted the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 1950 FIFA World Cup.
Recife began as a collection of fishing shacks, inns and warehouses on the delta between the Capibaribe and Beberibe Rivers in the captaincy of Pernambuco, sometime between 1535 and 1537 in the earliest days of Portuguese colonisation of Terra de Santa Cruz, later called Brazil, on the northeast coast of South America. It was a settlement of colonial fishermen and way station for Portuguese sailors and passing ships.
The first documented reference to the settlement with its "arrecife dos navios" (reef of the ships) was in the royal Charter Act of March 12, 1537, establishing Olinda, 6 kilometres (3.7 miles) to the north, as a village, with its port where the Beberibe River meets the sea. Olinda (and Igarassu before it) had been settled in 1536 by Captain General Duarte Coelho, a Portuguese nobleman, proprietor and administrator of the captaincy of Pernambuco.
The city is named for the long reef recife running parallel to the shoreline which encloses its harbour. The reef is not as sometimes stated, a coral reef, but a consolidated ancient beach, now as firm and hard as stone.
In 1541, Coelho returned from the Kingdom of Portugal with the machinery for an engenho (sugar mill), and with it, his brother-in-law established the first mill named Nossa Senhora da Ajuda (Our Lady of Help), in the floodplain of the Beberibe River at Recife. At that time the banks of the Capibaribe River were covered by sugar cane.
Recife was capital of the 17th century New Holland (Dutch Brazil) established by the Dutch West India Company and was called Mauritsstad. The city was eventually recaptured by the Portuguese in 1654, following their victories at the first and second Battle of Guararapes.
The Mascate War of 1710–1711 pitted merchants of Recife against those of nearby Olinda.
It has often been called "The Venice of Brazil".
Recife has a tropical forest. Rainforests are characterised by high rainfall, with definitions setting minimum normal annual rainfall between 2,000 millimetres (79 in) and 1,700 millimetres (67 in). The soil can be poor because high rainfall tends to leach out soluble nutrients. There are several common characteristics of tropical rainforest trees.
The city of Recife is formed by three islands (Recife, Santo Antônio, and Boa Vista). Between the islands are the rivers Beberibe and Capibaribe. Other rivers are the Jiquiá, Tejipió, Jordão and Pina.
Recife has a tropical monsoon climate (Am) under the Köppen climate classification, with warm to hot temperatures and high relative humidity throughout the year. However, these conditions are relieved by pleasant westwardly trade winds blowing in from the ocean. January and February are the warmest months, with mean temperatures ranging from 31 °C (88 °F) to 22 °C (72 °F), with sun. July is the second cloudiest month and experiences the coolest temperatures, with mean temperatures ranging from 28 °C (82 °F) to 21 °C (70 °F). The wettest month is June, receiving an average of 390 mm (15.4 in) of rain. Recife features a short dry season which lasts from October to December. The driest and sunniest month is November, when maximum temperatures hover around 30 °C (86 °F) and an average of 39 mm (1.5 in) of rain is recorded.
The Recife metropolitan area is the 5th most populous of Brazil, after São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre, and the first in the Northeast region. The most populous neighborhoods of Recife in 2008 were Boa Viagem (100,388), Casa Amarela (69,134), and Várzea (64,512).
According to the 2022 census, there were 1,488,920 people residing in the city of Recife. The census revealed the following numbers: 722,555 Pardo (Multiracial) people (48.5%), 578,413 White people (38.8%), 182,546 Black people (12.3%), 2,703 Asian people (0.2%), 2,656 Amerindian people (0.2%).
In 2010, the center city of Recife was the 9th most populous city in Brazil.
In 2010, the city had 268,160 opposite-sex couples and 1,004 same-sex couples. The gender proportion of the population of Recife was 53.8% female and 46.2% male.
The Patroness Saint of Recife is Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Nossa Senhora do Carmo), dating back one hundred and eight years ago (1909). Every July 16, her day, she is remembered by the Roman Catholics in Recife, in her church.
Source: IBGE 2022.
According to 2013 IBGE statistics, the GDP was at R$46,445,339,000. And the GDP per capita was at R$29,037.
Recife has an area dedicated to information technology called "Porto Digital" (Digital Port) with more than 90 companies and 3,000 high tech Jobs. It was founded in July 2000 and has since attracted major investments. Generating some R$10 billion (Brazilian Reais) a year, it produces technology that is exported to the United States, India, Japan, and China, among other countries. Software manufacturing is the main activity in the Porto Digital. The Porto Digital cluster comprises small and medium companies, but multinationals from across the world, like Accenture, Motorola, Samsung, Dell and Sun Microsystems also have operations there. IBM and Microsoft transferred their regional headquarters to Recife.
Porto Digital's startups can count on a ready pool of talent, courtesy of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), which boasts one of the best computer-science departments in all of Latin America. The university began teaching programmers to use Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (SUNW) Java language in 1996, the year it was introduced. Professors at the school also teamed up to launch the Centro de Estudos e Sistemas Avançados do Recife (C.E.S.A.R), a business incubator that has played a vital role in the birth of some 30 companies.
Due to its ports, airport, and geographic location in the northeastern region of Brazil, Recife is considered one of the biggest logistics hubs in Brazil. The Logistics and Communications sector employs 4% of the people in Recife, 12.3% in Jaboatão dos Guararapes and over 9% in the Metropolitan Area. These numbers were due to increase with the conclusion of the Transnordestina (the main NE Trainline) with a 1,800/1,118 km/mi extension, which will cross 3 and connect 7 States (34 municipalities in Pernambuco alone) products with Suape port (PE) and Pecem Port (CE)) with costs that are estimated to be around 4.5 R$.
Recife has historically benefited from its central location in the Northeast region. In a 200-mile (320 km) radius from Recife are four state capitals, two international and three regional airports, five international ports, 12 million people, 51% of the research centers of the Northeast and 35% of the region's GDP. Similarly, in a 500-mile (800 km) radius there are seven state capitals, five international and five regional airports, nine international seaports and two fluvial ports.
Shopping Center Recife was inaugurated in 1980 and it was subsequently surpassed by Riomar Mall, which gross leasable area is 101.000 m2, compared with 91.200m² of Shopping Recife. Other shopping centers include:
The Metropolitan Region of Recife has the third largest medical pool in Brazil, after São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Together they make up 417 hospitals and clinics with 72,000 employees in the Metro Area and more than 120,000 in the State of Pernambuco. The medical pool offers a total of 8,990 beds and, according to the Union of the Hospitals of Pernambuco, recorded in the year 2000 an invoicing of R$220 million (Brazilian Reals). It is thanks to the pool that Pernambuco has access to more CT scan devices than more developed countries such as Canada or France.
A large portion of the modern hospitals included in the pool are located between the neighbourhoods of Derby and of the Ilha do Leite. The Hospital Real Português de Beneficência Portuguesa em Pernambuco, or "Hospital Português" (Portuguese Hospital) for short, is one of the most renowned hospitals in the country. Many people from neighbouring states go to Recife for treatment, as it has the largest and best medical facilities in the North–Northeast of Brazil. Recife has three universities / medical schools for medicine, two public, Federal University of Pernambuco and University of Pernambuco; and one private, Escola Pernambucana de Medicina FBV/IMIP (Medical School of Pernambuco).
Many events taking place during the year include:
Because of its geographic location, tourism and city infrastructure, Recife's convention centers are of a high standard. The two centers are:
The third largest convention center in Brazil.
A modern theatre with 1,931 seats and 2,071 square metres (22,290 square feet) of exposition area located on the university campus.
Recife's municipal government is divided into an executive branch called the Prefeitura, led by a mayor (Brazilian Portuguese: Prefeito/Prefeita) and a legislative branch called the Câmara Municipal, consisting of 39 councillors. Elections are held every four years, with the most recent being held in 2020. The current mayor is João Campos of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), son of former governor of Pernambuco, Eduardo Campos.
The city is the capital of the state of Pernambuco, and hosts administrative buildings of the state governor, legislative assembly, and judiciary.
Celebrations, holidays and other events are numerous throughout the year. The New Year begins at the beach, Praia de Boa Viagem and in Old Recife. The carnival of Recife and Olinda (which has its historic town centre considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982) begins many weeks ahead in December with innumerable balls and parades.
In the city, the carnival festivities begin in January, as locals begin preparing for the official Carnival, which starts the week before Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in the Christian liturgical calendar. The pre-Carnival parties usually consist of percussion groups practising in local clubs, city streets and squares, and even Carnival balls. There is a variety of rhythms from different cultures. Carnival officially starts with the Galo da Madrugada, a party in Downtown Recife where people call old Recife, that attracts many people from several states of Brazil, and other parts of the world.
Recife has many quality 3, 4 and 5-Star International Hotels as well as Pousadas (traditional Bed & breakfast) and Apart-Hotels, totalling more than 11,500 bedrooms and this number increases to over 30,000 when the metropolitan area is considered.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Recife”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.