Recife is Brazil's northeastern giant of reefs, sugar, and hospitals
Recife, capital of Pernambuco on Brazil's northeastern Atlantic coast, is the largest urban area in the North and Northeast regions and the state's biggest city. High HDI for the Northeast coexists with some of the country's worst gun-violence rates.
The metro is Pernambuco's industrial core—sugar and ethanol, vehicles, ships, oil platforms, electronics, and software—boosted by fiscal incentives. Abundant labour and investment made Recife Brazil's second medical hub after São Paulo, drawing patients from neighbouring states.
It began between 1535 and 1537 as fishing shacks, inns and warehouses on the delta of the Capibaribe and Beberibe rivers, a stopover for Portuguese sailors. A royal charter of 12 March 1537 establishing nearby Olinda first mentions its reef of the ships. That reef, which gave the city its name, runs parallel to the shore and is not coral but an ancient beach hardened to stone. In 1541 Duarte Coelho brought machinery from Portugal, and the first sugar mill, Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, rose on the Beberibe floodplain.
In the 17th century it was Mauritsstad, capital of Dutch Brazil under the Dutch West India Company, until the Portuguese retook it in 1654 after two battles at Guararapes; the Mascate War of 1710 to 1711 then set its merchants against Olinda's. Built across three islands, Recife, Santo Antônio and Boa Vista, with rivers threading between, it is often called the Venice of Brazil. The metro held 3,726,974 people in 2022.
The Federal University of Pernambuco is the state's largest, and Recife shares with Natal the only direct flights to Fernando de Noronha. Porto de Galinhas, 60 kilometres south, keeps winning best-beach titles, and the city hosted matches in the 1950 and 2014 World Cups.
Source: Recife
