Caracas

Caracas lies in a high valley close to Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, separated from the sea by the steep Ávila mountains. Indigenous communities inhabited the valley before Spanish conquest. Diego de Losada founded Santiago de León de Caracas in 1567, and the city grew around its central square and churches. Its mountain setting offered cooler ground than the coast while routes over the range connected it to the port of La Guaira.

Cacao cultivation and trade helped make Caracas the political and economic centre of colonial Venezuela. Planters relied on enslaved African labour as well as Indigenous labour, and in 1728 the Crown granted the Caracas Company exclusive trading rights. The city’s merchants, officials and landowners gained influence through these connections, while social inequalities and disputes over trade shaped colonial life. An earthquake in 1641 damaged the city and its churches, but Caracas was rebuilt in the same valley.

On 19 April 1810 a movement in Caracas displaced the captain general and established a governing junta. Venezuela declared independence the following year. A devastating earthquake struck Caracas in March 1812 amid the war against royalist forces, and the first republic soon fell. The struggle for independence continued for several more years; victory at Carabobo in 1821 opened the way for republican control of Caracas and much of Venezuela.

The later city of Los Teques also lies here.