Brazil Inaugurates Brasília as Its New Capital

On 21 April 1960, Brazil officially transferred its federal government from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília, a brand-new planned city constructed across the interior plateau of the Brazilian Highlands. The initiative fulfilled a long-standing goal within Brazilian history. In 1823, the statesman José Bonifácio proposed to Brazil's Constituent Assembly moving the capital inland from the densely settled Atlantic coast. The republican constitution of 1891 later reserved a designated parcel on the central plateau for this purpose, leading to survey expeditions in the 1890s led by astronomer Luís Cruls. Despite an initial foundation stone set in 1922, the proposal languished until Juscelino Kubitschek won the presidency in 1955, pledging to advance the national economy by five decades within his five-year administration.

Following his inauguration in early 1956, Kubitschek ordered the construction of the future capital. In 1957, a jury of Brazilian and foreign members chose Lúcio Costa's master plan from 26 entries. Costa, an urbanist influenced by the modernist architect Le Corbusier, structured the city along a cross-axial grid. The resulting layout was widely compared to an airplane or a bird, featuring a primary east-to-west corridor named the Monumental Axis and a perpendicular north-to-south Residential Axis. Construction moved at an extraordinary pace: about 41 months passed between the start of work in 1956 and the inauguration.