Qualla: Federal District (Brazil)

Federal District (Brazil): Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Texugo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Thirty thousand workers built Brasilia in 41 months. The Federal District they built for it is the smallest federal unit in Brazil, almost entirely surrounded by the state of Goias with one small notch touching Minas Gerais. It has no municipalities, because the Brazilian Constitution forbids it from being divided into any, and instead it consists of 35 administrative regions governed from a single building. The district exists for one reason: to hold a capital city, one that President Juscelino Kubitschek promised to build in the interior and delivered, astonishingly, on schedule. On April 21, 1960, the date he chose in honor of Tiradentes, the executed leader of the 1789 independence plot, the government moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia.

Image: Texugo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Federal District (Brazil): The Cruls Commission

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adelano Lázaro, Public domain. The idea of moving the capital away from the coast had been in the first republican constitution of 1891. The Brazilian government appointed astronomer Luiz Cruls that same year to lead an exploration commission into the Central Highlands: doctors, geologists, botanists, mapping ...

Image: Adelano Lázaro | Public domain

Federal District (Brazil): Lucio Costa's Airplane

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Universidade de Brasília from Brasília, Brasil, CC BY 2.0. A public competition chose the pilot plan of architect Lucio Costa, whose design laid out the city in the shape of a cross that reads, from the air, as an airplane or a bird. The Monumental Axis running east-west hosts the government buildings: the National Congress with Oscar Ni...

Image: Universidade de Brasília from Brasília, Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Federal District (Brazil): The Candangos

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marinelson Almeida - Traveling through Brazil from Niteroi, Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The workers who built Brasilia came mostly from Goias, Minas Gerais, and the impoverished Northeast. They were called candangos, a word that originally meant something closer to outsider or riffraff but was reclaimed as a badge of pride. They lived in temporary camps, worked on i...

Image: Marinelson Almeida - Traveling through Brazil from Niteroi, Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Federal District (Brazil): A Small District, Dense with Power

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreza Oliveira Borges, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Federal District covers about 5,800 square kilometers, more than double the size of the city of Tokyo and slightly larger than Rhode Island. Most of it is cerrado, the Brazilian savanna that rolls across the central plateau at altitudes between 600 and 1,100 meters. The artif...

Image: Andreza Oliveira Borges | CC BY-SA 3.0

Federal District (Brazil): The Three Powers Square

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agência Brasília from Brasília, Brasil, CC BY 2.0. At the end of Niemeyer's Monumental Axis stands the Praca dos Tres Poderes, the Three Powers Square, where the Planalto Palace of the Presidency, the National Congress, and the Supreme Court face one another. A 286-square-meter Brazilian flag flies from a 100-meter triangular pol...

Image: Agência Brasília from Brasília, Brasil | CC BY 2.0