Caracas, officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). It is located along the Guaire River in the northern part of Venezuela, within the Caracas Valley of the Venezuelan coastal mountain range. The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the shore by a steep 2,200-meter-high (7,200-foot) mountain range, Cerro El Ávila. To the south there are more hills and mountains that form the valley. The Metropolitan Region of Caracas has an estimated population of over 5 million inhabitants.
The historic center of the city is the Caracas Cathedral, located on Bolívar Square, though some consider the center to be Plaza Venezuela, located in the Los Caobos area. Businesses in the city include service companies, banks, and malls. Caracas has a largely service-based economy, apart from some industrial activity in its metropolitan area. The Caracas Stock Exchange and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) are headquartered in Caracas. Empresas Polar, the largest private company in Venezuela, is also headquartered here. Caracas is Venezuela's cultural capital, with many restaurants, shopping centers, theaters, and museums found in the city, including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas. Caracas is home to some of the tallest skyscrapers in Latin America, such as the Parque Central Towers.
History
Before the city was founded in 1567, the valley of Caracas was populated by indigenous peoples. Francisco Fajardo, the son of a Spanish captain and a Waikeri cacique, who came from Margarita, began establishing settlements in the area of La Guaira and the Caracas valley between 1555 and 1560. Fajardo attempted to establish a plantation in the valley in 1562 after these coastal towns proved unsuccessful, but it did not last long, being destroyed by natives of the region led by Terepaima and Guaicaipuro. Fajardo's 1560 settlement was known as Hato de San Francisco, and another attempt in 1561 by Juan Rodríguez de Suárez was called Villa de San Francisco, and was also destroyed by the same native people. The eventual settlers of Caracas came from Coro, the capital of the German Klein-Venedig colony located around the present-day coastal Colombia–Venezuela border. From the 1540s, the colony had been de facto controlled by Spaniards. Moving eastward from Coro, groups of Spanish settlers founded inland towns including Barquisimeto and Valencia, before reaching the Caracas valley.
On 25 July 1567, Captain Diego de Losada laid the foundations of the city of Santiago de León de Caracas. De Losada had been commissioned to capture the valley, and was successful by splitting the natives into smaller groups and defeating each of them individually. Out of the newly established settlements, Caracas was the closest to the coast. The Spanish colonists retained a native workforce, which allowed them to develop a trade network between Caracas, the interior of Venezuela, and Margarita. The towns further inland traded cotton and beeswax, while Margarita was a rich source of pearls. The Caracas valley had a good environment for both agricultural and arable farming, which contributed to the system of commerce. However, the town's population was initially sparse, as it was only large enough to support a few farms.
In 1577, Caracas became the capital of the Spanish Empire's Venezuela Province, under the province's new governor Juan de Pimentel, leader from 1576–1583. In the 1580s, residents of Caracas started selling food via ship to Spanish soldiers stationed in Cartagena, who docked there to load goods from other parts of South America. Wheat was becoming increasingly expensive in the Iberian Peninsula, and the Spanish profited from buying it from farmers in Caracas. This cemented the city in the empire's trade circuit.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the coast of Venezuela was frequently raided by pirates. With the coastal mountains of the Central Range acting as a barrier, Caracas was relatively immune to such attacks, compared to other Caribbean coastal settlements, but in 1595 the Preston–Somers expedition landed and around 200 English Privateers, including George Somers and Amyas Preston, crossed the mountains through a little-used pass while the town's defenders were guarding the more frequently used one. Encountering little resistance, the invaders sacked and set fire to the town after a failed ransom negotiation. The city managed to rebuild, using wheat profits and "a lot of sacrifice". In the 1620s, farmers in Caracas discovered that cacao beans could be sold, first selling them to native people of Mexico and quickly growing across the Caribbean. The city became important in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and also moved from using largely native slave labor to African slaves, the first of the Spanish colonies to become part of the slave trade. The city was successful and operated on cacao and slave labor until the 1650s, when an alhorra blight, the Mexican Inquisition of many of their Portuguese traders, and increased cacao production in Guayaquil greatly affected the market. This and the destructive 1641 earthquake put the city into decline, and they likely began illegally trading with the Dutch Empire, which Caraqueños later proved sympathetic to; by the 1670s, Caracas had a trading route through Curaçao.
In 1728, the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas was founded by the king, and the cacao business grew in importance. Caracas was made one of the three provinces of Nueva Granada, corresponding to Venezuela, in 1739. Over the next three decades the Viceroyalty was variously split, with Caracas province becoming the Venezuela province. Luis de Unzaga created the Captaincy General of Venezuela in the summer of 1777, with Caracas as the capital. Venezuela then attempted to become independent, first with the 1797 Gual and España conspiracy, based in Caracas, and then the successful 1811 Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. Caracas then came under worse luck: in 1812, an earthquake destroyed Caracas, a quarter of its population migrated in 1814, and the Venezuelan War of Independence continued until 24 June 1821, when Simón Bolívar defeated royalists in the Battle of Carabobo. Urban reforms only took place towards the end of the 19th century, under Antonio Guzmán Blanco: some landmarks were built, but the city remained distinctly colonial until the 1930s.
Caracas grew in size, population, and economic importance during Venezuela's oil boom in the early 20th century. In the 1950s, the metropolitan area of Gran Caracas was developed, and the city began an intensive modernization program, funding public buildings, which continued throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Cultural landmarks, like the University City of Caracas, designed by modernist architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000; the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex were built, as well as the Caracas Metro and a developed downtown area. Urban development was rapid, leading to the growth of slums on the hillsides surrounding the new city. Much of the city development also fell into disrepair come the end of the 20th century, with the 1980s oil glut and political instability like the Caracazo, meaning maintenance can not be sustained. The economic and social problems persist throughout the capital and country, characterized as the crisis in Venezuela. By 2017, Caracas was the most violent city in the world. On 3 January 2026, the United States launched strikes on Caracas and captured President Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, and removed them from the country to New York City for criminal prosecution on narcoterrorism charges.
On 24 June 2026, the city was struck by a powerful earthquake doublet causing widespread damage, killing and injuring many.
Coat of arms
The previous coat of arms was adopted in 1591. Simón de Bolívar, an ancestor of Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar, had been named the first prosecutor general of the Venezuelan province in 1589. He served as the representative of Venezuela to the Spanish Crown, and vice versa. In 1591, de Bolívar introduced a petition to King Philip II for a coat of arms, which he granted by Royal Cedula on 4 September that year in San Lorenzo. The coat of arms represents the city's name with the red Santiago (St. James') cross. It originally depicted "a brown bear rampant on a field of silver, holding between its paws a golden shell with the red cross of Santiago; and its seal is a crown with five golden points". In the same act, the king declared Caracas as "The Most Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago de León de Caracas".
Until 2022, the anthem of the city was Marcha a Caracas, written by the composer Tiero Pezzuti de Matteis with the lyrics by José Enrique Sarabia and approved in 1984.
Geography
Caracas is contained entirely within a valley of the Venezuelan Central Range, and is separated from the Caribbean coast by a roughly 15-kilometer (9 mi) expanse of El Ávila National Park. The valley is relatively small and quite irregular. The altitude varies between 870 and 1,043 meters (2,854 and 3,422 ft) above sea level; the historic center lies at about 900 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level. This, along with the rapid population growth, has profoundly influenced the urban development of the city. The most elevated point of the Capital District, wherein the city is located, is the Pico El Ávila, which rises to 2,159 meters (7,083 feet).
The main body of water in Caracas is the Guaire River, which flows across the city and empties into the Tuy River, which is also fed by the El Valle and San Pedro rivers, in addition to numerous streams which descend from El Ávila. The La Mariposa and Camatagua reservoirs provide water to the city. The city is occasionally subject to earthquakes – notably in 1641, 1812, 1967 and 2026.
Geologically, Caracas was formed in the Late Cretaceous period, with much of the rest of the Caribbean, and sits on what is mostly metamorphic rock. Deformation of the land in this period formed the region.
Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, Caracas has a tropical savanna climate (Aw), milder due to the elevation and within the Venezuelan Coastal Range (Maritime Andes). Caracas precipitation varies between 900 and 1,300 millimeters (35 and 51 inches) (annual), in the city proper to 2,000 millimeters (79 inches) in some parts of the Mountain range. While Caracas is within the tropics, due to its altitude, temperatures are cooler compared to other locations with a typical tropical savanna climate. The annual average temperature is approximately 23.4 °C (74 °F). The average of the coldest month, January, is 21.7 °C (71 °F). The average of the warmest month, May, is 24.5 °C (76 °F), which gives a small annual thermal amplitude of 2.8 °C (5.0 °F).
In December and January abundant fog may appear, in addition to a sudden nightly drop in temperature, until reaching 8 °C (46 °F). This peculiar weather is known by the natives of Caracas as the Pacheco. Nightly temperatures year round are much (7 to 11 °C) lower than daytime highs and usually do not remain above 24 °C (75 °F), resulting in very pleasant evening temperatures. Hailstorms appear in Caracas, although only on rare occasions. Electrical storms are much more frequent, especially between June and October, due to the city being in a closed valley and the orographic action of Cerro El Ávila.
Hydrography
The hydrographic network of the city of Caracas is made up of the Guaire river basin which is a sub-basin of the Tuy river. This basin crosses the valley where the city is located from West to East (Las Adjuntas – Petare). It covers about 655 square kilometers, about 45 km. long and about 15 km. wide, has a rectangular shape. The basin is formed by the Caracas Valley, which is relatively high, narrow and long, surrounded by the high and steep Cordillera de la Costa, which runs parallel to the Litoral.
Among the characteristics of the hydrographic network associated with the city of Caracas is the high degree of contamination present in the lower parts of the Guaire River due to its tributaries having been used for sewage collection since 1874, during the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco, until today. The level of contamination is such that it does not allow the maintenance of the life of the species that once populated the basin, and it has become extinct or has been restricted to the highest areas of the basin, mainly within the boundaries of El Ávila National Park. Awareness for the recovery of the basin has recently begun, however, much remains to be done before results can be observed.
Among the main rivers and streams that make up the basin are in its northern slope: San Pedro River, Macarao River, Quebrada Caroata, Catuche River, Anauco River, Chacaito River, Tocome River, Caurimare River; on its southern slope we find that among the main tributaries are: El Valle river, Quebrada Baruta and Quebrada La Guairita. In the upper part of the basin there are two reservoirs with the purpose of supplying water to the western part of the city; These are the Macarao Dam and the La Mariposa Reservoir.