Belém (Brazilian Portuguese: [beˈlẽj̃]; Portuguese for 'Bethlehem'; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará), often called Belém of Pará, is the capital and largest city of the state of Pará in the North of Brazil. It is the gateway to the Amazon River with a busy port, airport, and bus/coach station. Belém lies approximately 100 km (62.1 miles) upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, on the Pará River, which is part of the greater Amazon River system, separated from the larger part of the Amazon delta by Ilha de Marajó (Marajo Island). With an estimated population of 1,398,531 people — or 2,491,052, considering its metropolitan area — it is the 12th most populous city in Brazil, as well as the 16th by economic relevance. It is the second largest in the North Region, second only to Manaus, in the state of Amazonas.
Founded in 1616 by the Kingdom of Portugal, Belém was the first European colony on the Amazon but did not become part of Brazil until 1775. The newer part of the city has modern buildings and skyscrapers. The colonial portion retains the charm of tree-filled squares, churches and traditional blue tiles. The city has a rich history and architecture from colonial times. Recently, it witnessed a skyscraper boom.
Belém is also known as the Metropolis of the Brazilian Amazon region or the Cidade das Mangueiras (City of Mango Trees) due to the vast number of those trees found in the city. Brazilians often refer to the city as Belém do Pará ("Belém of Pará") rather than just Belém, a reference to an earlier name for the city, Santa Maria de Belém do Grão Pará ("Saint Mary of Bethlehem of Great Pará"), and also to differentiate it from a number of other towns called Belém in Brazil, as well as the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank of Palestine. It is named after Santa Maria de Belém in Lisbon, also better known by its shortened name, Belém.
Belém is served by Belém International Airport, which connects the city with the rest of Brazil and other cities in South America, North America (United States) and Europe (Lisbon). The city is also home to the Federal University of Pará and the State University of Pará.
The name Belém is the Portuguese version of English Bethlehem, ultimately from Hebrew בֵּית לֶחֶם (bēṯ lɛ́ḥɛm, literally “house of bread”). Originally, the city was named "Santa Maria de Belém do Pará" (Saint Mary of Bethlehem in Pará) or "Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará (Our Lady of Bethlehem of Grão-Pará). This was eventually abbreviated to "Belém do Pará."
In 1615, Portuguese captain-general Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco of the captaincy of Bahia commanded a military expedition sent by the Governor General of Brazil to check the trading excursions of foreigners (French, Dutch, English) up the river (Amazon) from the Cabo do Norte in Grão Pará.
On January 12, 1616, he anchored in what is now known as Guajará Bay, formed by the confluence of the Para and Guamá Rivers, called by the Tupinambás, "Guaçu Paraná". Caldeira mistook the bay for the main channel, and thirty leagues (178 km) upstream, he built a wooden fort, covered with straw, which he called "Presépio" (nativity scene), now known as "Forte do Castelo". The colony formed by the fort was given the name Feliz Lusitânia, "Fortunate Lusitania". It was the embryo of the future city of Belém. The fort failed to suppress Dutch and French trading, but did ward off colonization.
Feliz Lusitânia was later called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão Pará (Our Lady of Bethlehem of Grao-Para) and Santa Maria de Belém (St. Mary of Bethlehem). Belém was given city status in 1655 and was made capital of the State when Pará state was split off from Maranhão in 1772. The early decades of the 19th century were marked by political instability. Uprisings and internecine strife finally ended in 1836, after considerable loss of life.
The sugar trade in the Belém region was important up to the end of the 17th century. Thereafter the city's economic importance alternately rose and fell. Cattle ranching supplanted sugar until the 18th century, when cultivation of rice, cotton and coffee became profitable. With the settlement of southern Brazil, where such crops could be produced more efficiently, Belém declined again. The city subsequently became the main exporting centre of the Amazon rubber industry, and by 1866 its position was further enhanced by the opening of the Amazon, Tocantins and Tapajós rivers to navigation. The importance of Belém was then somewhat reduced by the development of the Port of Manaus upriver. The rubber era ended after the boom of 1910–12, but Belém continued to be the main commercial centre of northern Brazil and the entrepôt for the Amazon valley.
The municipality includes the islands of Mosqueiro, fringed by 14 freshwater beaches, and Caratateua which receive a large number of visitors in summertime. In addition to these and also near Belém, is the island of Tatuoca which is the location of one of the seven geophysical stations in the world, and the only station in Latin America.
Belém has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen: Af) more subject to the Intertropical Convergence Zone than the maritime trade winds, and with no cyclones; that is, a true equatorial climate. In all 12 months of the year, the city on average sees more than 60 mm of rainfall, so the city has no true dry season month. However, Belém features noticeably wetter and drier seasons. The wetter season spans from December through May, while the drier season covers the remaining six months of the year. Like many cities with a tropical rainforest climate, average temperatures vary little throughout the course of the year, generally hovering around 26.5 degrees Celsius. Due to its location in the Amazon, tropical rainforest is the natural vegetation in and around the city.
The Amazon represents more than half the planet's remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world. Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia. As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. More than one-third of all species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest.
Many valuable products now exported from the Amazon by way of Belém are aluminium, iron ore, and other metals, nuts (chiefly Brazil nuts), pineapples, cassava, jute, wood veneers, and hardwoods. Japanese immigration after the 1930s was an important factor in developing jute and black pepper, notably at Tomé-Açu, just south of Belém, and near Santarém. Marajó Island, the largest fluvial island in the world, which lies just across the Rio Pará from Belém, has some livestock grazing. Electricity is provided by the massive Tucuruí Dam, some 300 km southwest of the city on the Tocantins River.
According to the IBGE of 2018, there were 2,491,052 people residing in the Metropolitan Region of Belém. This region is composed by 7 cities: Belém (1,485.732 people), Ananindeua (525,566 people), Marituba (129,321 people), Benevides (61,689 people), Santa Bárbara do Pará (20,704 people), Santa Izabel do Pará (69,746 people), and Castanhal (198,294 people). In 2012, according to IBGE, the capital city itself had a population density of 1,337.2 inhabitants per square kilometre (3,463/sq mi). The last PNAD (National Research for Sample of Domiciles) census revealed the following numbers: 806,103 Pardo (Multiracial) people (61.8%), 342,476 White (26.3%), 149,395 Black (11.5%), 3,298 Asian people (0.3%) and 2,069 Amerindian people (0.2%).
According to an autosomal DNA genetic study from 2011, the ancestral composition of the population of Belém is: 68.6% European ancestry, followed by 20.9% Amerindian ancestry and 10.6% African ancestry.
Portuguese is the official national language, and thus the primary language taught in schools. But English and Spanish are part of the official high school curriculum.