Founding of Caracas

Caracas was founded by the Spanish captain Diego de Losada as Santiago de Leon de Caracas, in a high valley between the Avila mountain and the Caribbean coast. The name joined a Spanish patron saint to that of the local Indigenous people, the Caracas. The settlement was modest for much of the colonial period, but it became the capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela in the late eighteenth century and the birthplace of Simon Bolivar, the leader of South American independence. Caracas was at the centre of the declaration of independence in 1811. In the twentieth century, oil revenue turned it into a modern metropolis, ringed by dense hillside neighbourhoods and shaped by sharp social contrasts.

Open on the timeline