Rio de Janeiro Founded

The bay of Guanabara, on Brazil's southeastern coast, was first sighted by Portuguese navigators in 1502, who mistook its broad entrance for the mouth of a river and named it Rio de Janeiro, the 'River of January.' In the 1550s French Huguenots and other settlers established a colony there known as France Antarctique, building fortifications on an island in the bay and threatening Portuguese claims to the region.

Determined to expel the intruders, the Portuguese mounted campaigns against the French settlement. In 1565 Estacio de Sa formally founded the city of Sao Sebastiao do Rio de Janeiro, and over the following years Portuguese forces drove out the remaining French colonists and their Indigenous allies, securing control of the bay by 1567.

Rio de Janeiro grew into one of the most important ports of Portuguese America, exporting sugar and later the gold and diamonds of the Minas Gerais mining region. In 1763 it replaced Salvador as the colonial capital, and in 1808 it became the seat of the exiled Portuguese court. The city later served as capital of independent Brazil for more than a century.