Niterói (English: NEE-tə-ROY, NIT-ə-ROY, Brazilian Portuguese: [niteˈɾɔj]) is a municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro, in the southeast region of Brazil. It lies across Guanabara Bay, facing the city of Rio de Janeiro and forming part of the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Area. It was the capital of Rio de Janeiro, as marked by its golden mural crown, from 1834 to 1894 and again from 1903 to 1975. It has an estimated population of 515,317 inhabitants (2020) and an area of 129.375 km2 (49.952 sq mi), making it the fifth most populous city in the state. It has the highest Human Development Index in the state and the seventh highest among Brazil's municipalities in 2010. Individually, it is the municipality with the second highest average monthly household income per capita in Brazil and appears in 13th place among the municipalities of the country according to social indicators related to education. The city has the nicknames of Cidade Sorriso (Smile City).
Studies by the Getulio Vargas Foundation in June 2011 classified Niterói as the richest city in Brazil, with 55.7% of the population classified as class A. Considering classes A and B, Niterói also appears in the first place, with 85.9% of the population in these classes. According to 2010 data from IBGE, Niterói's nominal gross domestic product was 11.2 billion reais, being the fifth municipality with the highest gross domestic product of the state. The city is the second-largest formal employer in the state of Rio de Janeiro, although it ranks 5th in terms of population. The city is one of the main financial, commercial and industrial centers in the state of Rio de Janeiro, being the 12th among the 100 best Brazilian cities to do business.
Niterói was founded on 22 November 1573 by the Tupi chief Arariboia, who later was forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism and was given the Christian name of Martim Afonso, after the Portuguese explorer Martim Afonso de Sousa, making it the only Brazilian city to have been founded by a non-Christian, non-assimilated indigenous person.
The municipality contains part of the 2,400-hectare (5,900-acre) Serra da Tiririca State Park, created in 1991.
"Niterói" is a term of Tupi origin, with "Nheterõîa" being its recorded form in the Vocabulary in the Brasílica Language (Vocabulário na língua brasílica), a dictionary of the Tupi language compiled at the end of the 16th century. According to Frederico Edelweiss, this term would mean "the (bay) all sinuous", through the composition of nhe-, a reflexive pronoun, terõ, "sinuous" (a term recorded by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya in his Tesoro de la lengua guaraní ), and îá, a particle that indicates a customary trait. Edelweiss reinforces this hypothesis through the poem De Gestis Mendi de Saa, which calls Rio de Janeiro a "sinuous port" twice, and he suggests that this designation reveals Tupi influence.
In the year 1555, French navigator Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon allied himself with the Tupinambas Indians who dominated the Guanabara Bay and instituted a French colony in the region, France Antarctique. The region was avoided by the Portuguese because of the hostility of the Tupinamba. The region developed under the command of Villegaignon, who planned to build a city in the region. After a while, Calvinists who had emigrated from France to the colony returned to France, where they accused Villegaignon of prejudice against Protestants and of maladministration. The French navigator had to return to France to explain himself.
Following the absence of the French leader, the Portuguese crown began noticing that the bay of Rio de Janeiro would make a strategic scale for the Atlantic route of ships from Portugal to its colonies in Africa and Asia, as well an important advanced bridgehead for the defense of South Brazil. Fortresses were built and an alliance was formed with nearby native Tupi-Guaraní tribes to defend the settlement against other European invaders. Then, in 1560, the Portuguese leader Mem de Sá attacked and destroyed the French fort that was located in Guanabara Bay, Coligny Fort, without, however, being able to definitively expel the French from the region. Estácio de Sá, Mem de Sá's nephew, who would continue to command the war, enlisted the help of the head of the Temiminos Indians, Arariboia, who accepted the governor's request to help the Portuguese expel the French from the Guanabara Bay, in the hope to regain the mother island.
With the end of the war in 1567, Estácio de Sá invoked Arariboia and the Temininós Indians to occupy the right side of the entrance to the Guanabara Bay, opposite the city of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro founded by Estácio in 1565, as previously requested by Arariboia a tract of land. Thus, the entrance to the bay would be fully protected from intrusion. The place to be occupied by Arariboia was known as "Banda D'Além" (the land beyond), in the eastern side of the bay, from River Marui to the Red Barriers between Gragoata and Boa Viagem beaches. This area corresponded to what is nowadays the northwestern part of the municipality of Niterói, which includes the central and northern zones of its urban area. There, in the "Land Beyond", Arariboia founded the Town of Saint Lawrence of the Indians (in Portuguese, Vila de São Lourenço dos Índios), the embryo for the future city of Niterói, a Tupi name that means "Hidden Waters".
The village was visited by the King of Brazil, John VI, in 1816, who also decreed its emancipation from Rio de Janeiro on 10 May 1819 and gave the new-created municipality a new name, Vila Real da Praia Grande (Royal Town of Great Beach).
In 1834, the city of Rio de Janeiro, capital of the newly established Empire of Brazil, was detached from the rest of Rio de Janeiro Province; Vila Real da Praia Grande was then chosen as the new capital of that province, while the city of Rio de Janeiro itself was converted into a neutral municipality, following the Ato Adicional. Niterói served the function of capital until the year of 1975 – except for the period between 1894 and 1903 when it was temporarily transferred to the city of Petrópolis.
Vila Real da Praia Grande was officially renamed Nictheroy (Tupi for "hidden waters") on 6 March 1835. This old spelling persisted until the mid-20th century, when the current spelling–Niterói–was adopted. The capital condition has brought a number of urban developments such as the steam boat, public lighting to whale oil, water supply and new means of transport to connect the city to the interior of the province. Nine years later, the Emperor D. Pedro II granted the city of Niterói the title of Imperial City. The appointment was given to the most important cities, giving them some autonomy and regional power.
At the end of the 19th century, around 1885, some tram systems were founded, which allowed the expansion of the city to Icaraí, Ponta d'Areia and Itaipu districts.
In 1890, the Brazilian provinces began being called states and the neutral municipality (Rio de Janeiro city) had its status changed to Federal District (or simply DF, the Portuguese acronym for Distrito Federal).
The monarchist navy revolt in 1893 damaged productive activities and forced the transfer of the capital's headquarters to Petrópolis. In 1903, Niterói returned to be the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. This brought about a new impulse to modernize the city with the construction of squares, decks, parks, waterway station and sewage network, as well as widening of the streets and main avenues.
A circus fire in the city killed 323 people on 17 December 1961; the fire was later found to have been deliberately set by disgruntled circus employees. It is one of the worst tragedies in Brazilian history and the most fatal in the annals of world circus show history.
Following the transference of Brazil's capital to Brasília in 1960, the city of Rio de Janeiro became a city-state named Guanabara. This state was merged with Rio de Janeiro State in 1975; since then, Niterói lost its condition of the state's capital in favor of the city of Rio de Janeiro.