Caracas

Caracas is the capital city of Venezuela.

It lies in a long valley between green mountains. The sea is on the other side of the mountains.

Caracas is the capital of Venezuela, a country in the north of South America. The city fills a long, narrow valley in a range of mountains called the Cordillera de la Costa, about 920 meters above sea level. To the north, a steep wall of mountains called El Ávila separates the city from the Caribbean Sea.

Venezuela's last census, in 2011, counted 1,943,901 people in Caracas's Capital District (Distrito Capital). The wider metropolitan area reaches beyond it, into part of the Sucre district.

Caracas occupies the Caracas Valley in the Cordillera de la Costa, Venezuela's coastal range, at about 920 m. The Ávila massif to the north, which the travel magazine Sounds and Colours calls the city's "green guardian", separates the valley from the Caribbean coast; its highest point, Pico Naiguatá, reaches 2,765 m.

The census of 30 October 2011, the most recent, counted 1,943,901 people in the Capital District (Distrito Capital). The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana notes that the old city occupied the western end of the valley and that its metropolitan area grew fastest after 1945, absorbing other urban centers. Later official projections, such as 2,089,000 for mid-2019, do not take emigration into account, City Population notes.

Caracas has a big university with art all around it. Its great hall has a famous artwork called the Clouds.

The mountain next to the city is a park. People walk on its trails.

The Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, the main campus of the Central University of Venezuela, was designed by the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva and built between 1940 and 1960. UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site in 2000. Its buildings, art and gardens fit together, and its great hall, the Aula Magna, is famous for the "Clouds" by the artist Alexander Calder.

The mountain to the north became El Ávila National Park in 1958. It is also called Waraira Repano, from an Indigenous name for the area. Old trails cross it from the city to the coast.

UNESCO describes the Ciudad Universitaria, built to Carlos Raúl Villanueva's design between 1940 and 1960, as an outstanding example of the Modern Movement, uniting reinforced-concrete architecture, art and landscape in one ensemble: the Aula Magna with Alexander Calder's "Clouds", the Olympic Stadium, the Covered Plaza and the Botanical Garden. Inscribed in 2000, UNESCO's report notes that its student population grew from 6,000 to about 50,000, one of the pressures on the site.

El Ávila National Park, created in 1958 and also named Waraira Repano from an Indigenous name, covers more than 81,800 hectares. Trails that Indigenous people built roughly 500 years ago to link the valley with the coast were later used by Spanish colonists and merchants; the park is managed by the National Institute of Parks (INPARQUES).

Caracas has trains that run under the ground. They are called the metro.

The city also has cable cars. Long ago, a cable car was built up the big mountain.

The Caracas Metro opened on 2 January 1983. Its first stretch ran 6.7 kilometers along the valley, from Propatria to La Hoyada, and on 27 March 1983 it reached Chacaíto. More lines followed: Line 2 in 1987, Line 3 in 1994, Line 4 in 2006 and the first part of Line 5 in 2015.

In 2010 Caracas added a Metrocable, cable cars linked to the metro, which run about 1.7 kilometers south from the Parque Central station. Long before that, in 1956, a cable car up El Ávila opened.

Metro de Caracas opened its first section of Line 1, Propatria to La Hoyada (6.7 km), on 2 January 1983, extended it to Chacaíto on 27 March 1983, and completed the east-west line in stages to November 1989. Railway Technology dates the construction of the first four lines to 1978–2006; Line 2 opened in 1987, Line 3 in 1994 and Line 4 in 2006, and UrbanRail.net records the first section of Line 5, Zona Rental to Bello Monte, opening on 3 November 2015. UrbanRail.net listed Line 1 at 20.4 km, about 18 km of it underground.

A Metrocable, an aerial cable line integrated with the metro, opened on 20 January 2010 from Parque Central station, running about 1.7 km south. The Ávila cable car (teleférico) and the Humboldt hotel at its summit opened in 1956; after years out of use, the cable car reopened in 2002.

Lots of birds live on the mountain next to Caracas.

Monkeys and sloths live there too. Orchid flowers grow high up on the mountain.

El Ávila park is home to about 500 kinds of birds, more than a third of all the bird species found in Venezuela. Red howler monkeys, brown-throated sloths, anteaters and armadillos live in its forests.

High on the mountain, about 180 kinds of orchids grow, among them Venezuela's national flower, an orchid called Cattleya mossiae. At the top of the range, Pico Naiguatá rises to 2,765 meters.

El Ávila's vegetation changes with height: drought-adapted cacti and shrubs low down, semi-deciduous and then evergreen forest above about 600 m, cloud forest between 1,500 and 2,200 m, and sub-páramo above. The park holds more than 1,800 plant species, at least 17 found nowhere else, and about 180 orchids, including Venezuela's national flower, Cattleya mossiae.

Its roughly 500 bird species represent about 36 percent of Venezuela's birds, nine of them endemic to the country, among them the Caracas tapaculo. Mammals include the red howler monkey, brown-throated sloth, lesser anteater, crab-eating fox and lowland tapir. Fire is one of the park's greatest threats: introduced African grasses on the southern slopes help fires spread, and since 1946 a firebreak 20 m wide and 24.5 km long has helped keep fires from spreading to higher ground.