City of São Luís Maranhão - Pix from the Channel: [email protected] São Luís (often called São Luís do Maranhão) is a Brazilian municipality and the capital of the state of Maranhão. It is the only Brazilian city founded by the French, on September 8, 1612, later invaded by the Dutch and finally colonized by the Portuguese. It is located on the island of Upaon-Açu in the South Atlantic, between the bays of São Marcos and São José de Ribamar, in the Gulf of Maranhão. In 1621, when Brazil was divided into two administrative units, the State of Maranhão and the State of Brazil, São Luís was the capital of the first administrative unit. In 1997, the historic center of the city was declared a cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO. With a population of 1,091,868 inhabitants (IBGE estimate 2017), São Luís is the most populous municipality in Maranhão, in addition to being the 15th most populous municipality in Brazil, and the 4th in the Northeast Region. Its area is 831.7 km², of which 157.5656 km² are in urban perimeter. The municipality is the headquarters of the Planning Region of Maranhão Island (composed of the 4 municipalities located on the island of Upaon-Açu) and the Metropolitan Region of São Luís composed of 13 municipalities that total approximately 1,620,000 inhabitants. According to United Nations data from 2010, São Luís' Human Development Index (HDI) is 0.768 above the Brazilian average, the 3rd best HDI among the capitals of the Northeast region of Brazil, and 4th among all 1,794 municipalities in the region. The capital of Maranhão has a developed industrial sector due to large corporations and companies from various areas that have set up in the city due to its privileged geographical position between the North and Northeast regions of the country. Its coastline is strategically located much closer to large import centers of Brazilian products such as Europe and the United States, which allows for fuel savings and a reduction in the delivery time of goods from Brazil via the Port of Itaqui, which is the second deepest in the world and one of the busiest, most sophisticated and best structured for foreign trade in the country. The city is connected to the interior of the state, to the state of Piauí by the São Luís-Teresina railway, and to the neighboring states of Pará and Tocantins by the Estrada de Ferro Carajás and Ferrovia Norte-Sul railways, the latter of which connects the city to the Central-West region, facilitating and reducing the cost of agricultural transport from the interior of the country to the port of Itaqui. By road, the capital of Maranhão is served by the BR-135 (in the process of being widened) that connects it to the mainland, and by air it has the Marechal Cunha Machado International Airport, with a capacity to serve 5,900,000 passengers per year. The climate in São Luís is semi-humid tropical and is strongly influenced by the sea and the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The city has a large number of coconut trees and much coastal vegetation. There are small areas of Amazon rainforest that have resisted the process of urbanization of the city, all protected by environmental parks. Small rivers originate in the city: among them, the Bacanga River is the most economically important.