Venezuela

Venezuela is a country in South America.

It is at the very top, by the Caribbean Sea. It has tall mountains and wide, grassy plains. It has a giant river called the Orinoco. The capital city is called Caracas.

Venezuela is at the northern end of South America. The Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean lie to the north, Guyana to the east, Brazil to the south and Colombia to the west. It is bigger than France and Germany put together.

Venezuela has the northern end of the Andes mountains, a huge lake called Lake Maracaibo, the wide plains of the Llanos along the Orinoco River, and in the south the Guiana Highlands, with flat-topped mountains and Angel Falls. Most people speak Spanish, and the capital is Caracas.

Venezuela occupies a roughly triangular area of about 912,000 square kilometers at the northern end of South America, bounded by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Guyana to the east, Brazil to the south and Colombia to the southwest and west. It also administers Caribbean islands such as Margarita, La Tortuga and Los Roques.

Britannica divides its topography into lowland plains below about 500 m, mountains reaching about 5,000 m and interior forested uplands, and into seven regions: the islands and coastal plains with the Orinoco delta, the Lake Maracaibo Lowlands, the Andean Mérida and Perijá ranges, the coastal mountain system, the Segovia Highlands, the Llanos and the Guiana Highlands. In the 20th century, petroleum turned a mostly rural farming country into a rapidly urbanizing one.

Caracas is the capital of Venezuela.

It sits in a valley between mountains. Maracaibo is a big city beside a huge lake. A long bridge crosses the lake. In the south, giant flat mountains rise above the forest.

Caracas, the capital, was founded in 1567. It lies in a valley about 922 meters above the sea, with steep mountains between the city and the Caribbean coast. Its old center, around the Plaza Bolívar, has buildings from colonial times, and its Central University campus, built by the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, is a World Heritage Site.

Maracaibo is the second-largest city, near Lake Maracaibo, and a long bridge crosses the lake. In the far southeast, Canaima National Park protects flat-topped mountains, rivers and waterfalls, including Angel Falls.

Caracas, founded in 1567 as Santiago de León de Caracas, grew slowly until the 1940s and then expanded enormously. It fills a high valley about 25 km long, at 922 m at its center, walled off from the sea by the Cordillera del Litoral. Around the Plaza Bolívar stand the Caracas Cathedral, the National Capitol and the birthplace of Simón Bolívar. UNESCO inscribed the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas in 2000 as a masterpiece of modern city planning, architecture and art: Villanueva designed it between 1940 and 1960, with works such as Alexander Calder's 'Clouds' in the Aula Magna.

Coro, on the Falcón coast, was established from 1527; UNESCO (1993) notes its earthen buildings of bahareque, adobe and rammed earth, still built that way today. Canaima National Park, about 3 million hectares along the borders with Guyana and Brazil, was inscribed in 1994; tepuis cover roughly 65 percent of it.

Venezuela has tall mountains.

It has flat, grassy plains called the Llanos. It has mountains with flat tops, like giant tables. Water pours off one of them. That is Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world.

In the northwest, two branches of the Andes cross Venezuela. The highest peak, Pico Bolívar, is 4,978 meters tall. Along the Orinoco River lie the Llanos, flat plains of grassland and forest about 1,300 kilometers long, which flood in the rainy season and dry out in the dry season.

South of the Orinoco are the Guiana Highlands, made of very old rock. There, tepuis rise like giant tables with steep cliffs. Angel Falls leaps 979 meters from a tepui called Auyán-tepui; Britannica calls it the highest waterfall in the world. Most of Venezuela is warm all year, and the wet season runs from May to October.

The Cordillera de Mérida and the Perijá Mountains are northeastern extensions of Colombia's Cordillera Oriental; Pico Bolívar in the Mérida range reaches 4,978 m. Between them lies the Lake Maracaibo basin, one of the main oil-producing regions. The Llanos extend about 1,300 km from the Andean foothills to the Orinoco delta, 160 to 500 km wide, with summer floods and winter drought. The Guiana Highlands, of ancient crystalline rock, cover more than two-fifths of the country; their sandstone-capped tepuis include Mount Roraima on the Guyana border, and Angel Falls drops 979 m from Auyán-tepui.

The Orinoco and its tributary the Caroní carry about four-fifths of the country's surface runoff. Near its source the Orinoco splits: one branch flows into the Casiquiare, which joins the Negro, a tributary of the Amazon. More than nine-tenths of the country has a mean annual temperature above 24 °C, and temperatures change little from season to season; the wet season lasts from May to October, the dry season from December to March.

Jaguars and pumas live in Venezuela's forests.

Monkeys called howler monkeys live in the trees. Big snakes called anacondas live there too. Huge groups of ibises live by the Orinoco River.

Venezuela's forests are home to seven kinds of wild cats, including jaguars, ocelots, pumas and margays. Howler monkeys and spider monkeys live in the trees, and the tapir, a big hoofed animal with a long snout, lives there too.

Caimans and turtles live in the rivers, swamps and lagoons, and big snakes such as boas and anacondas live in the forests. Ibises gather in huge groups in the mangrove swamps of the Orinoco delta. Electric eels and piranhas swim in the rivers, and manatees, plant-eating mammals that live in water, survive in the estuaries along the coast.

Britannica counts seven species of the cat family in Venezuela's forested interior, among them jaguars, ocelots, jaguarundis, pumas and margays. Primates include howler and spider monkeys, long-tailed capuchins and nocturnal douroucoulis (night monkeys); tapirs, peccaries, agoutis and opossums also live in the forests, and herbivorous manatees survive in coastal estuaries.

Reptiles include caimans, several turtle species, boa constrictors and anacondas, and venomous coral snakes and bushmasters. There are vast ibis colonies in the Orinoco's mangrove delta and bellbirds in its basin forests, while electric eels and piranhas swarm in interior rivers. Vegetation varies with height: forests cover about two-fifths of the land and savanna grasses about half; above 3,000 m the Andes carry páramo, with few trees but many small alpine shrubs and lichens. Canaima National Park (1962) was made a World Heritage Site in 1994.

Most people in Venezuela speak Spanish.

Many people have Indigenous, European and African ancestors. Indigenous peoples speak many languages of their own. Arepas are a popular food. They are round, flat cornmeal cakes filled with cheese or meat.

Venezuela is a country of immigrants. About two-thirds of the people have mixed European and Indigenous ancestors, some with African ancestors too; about one-fifth have European roots and about one-tenth mainly African roots. The government counts some 38 Indigenous peoples; the Wayuu are the largest group, followed by the Warao.

Spanish is the main language, and Indigenous peoples speak more than 25 languages of their own. Nearly nine in ten people live in towns and cities, and the four largest cities are all in the north and northwest. Arepas, flat round cornmeal cakes, are eaten at any time of day, and baseball and football (soccer) are national sports.

Britannica describes Venezuela as a country of immigrants: about two-thirds of the population is mestizo or mulatto-mestizo, about one-fifth is of European lineage and one-tenth of mainly African ancestry, with a statistically small Indigenous population. During a period of open immigration from 1948 to 1958 the country recruited workers from Spain, Italy and Portugal, and about one million immigrants entered, though many later returned home. Government estimates count some 38 Amerindian peoples; three-fifths of Indigenous Venezuelans live in Zulia state, and the Wayuu (Goajiro) and Warao are the largest groups. Their more than 25 languages belong mostly to the Cariban, Arawakan and Chibchan families; Spanish is the national language of the majority.

The World Bank estimated the population at 28,516,896 in 2025. Nearly nine-tenths of people are classed as urban, about one-seventh in Greater Caracas. Most people are at least nominally Roman Catholic, with Protestant groups the largest minority and small Jewish and Muslim communities. Arepas are eaten throughout the day, often grilled or deep-fried and split as a sandwich; baseball and football are national sports, and Carnival is the major holiday.