Bolívar (state)
state of Venezuela
Bolívar (Spanish: Estado Bolívar, IPA: [esˈtaðo βoˈliβaɾ]) is the largest of the 23 states of Venezuela in area. The state capital city is Ciudad Bolívar and the largest city is Ciudad Guayana. Bolívar State covers a total surface area of 242,801 km2 (93,746 sq mi) and as of the 2011 census, had a population of 1,410,964. The state contains Angel Falls.
History
Spanish Colonization
During the time of the Spanish Empire, it was part of the province of Nueva Andalucía and later it was annexed to the province of Guayana from 1777 when King Charles III created the Captaincy General of Venezuela.
The capital of the state, Ciudad Bolivar was founded on December 21, 1595, by Antonio de Berrío, who had come from Nueva Granada (present-day Colombia) with the mission of populating Guyana. The town, originally called Santo Tomás de Guayana, was a fortified port that had to move three times, since it was the target of constant assaults by Caribbean Indians and European corsairs, among whom Sir Walter Raleigh stood out in 1617.
In 1764 it found a definitive site on the banks of the Orinoco, in its narrowest sector, for which it took the name of Santo Tomás de la Nueva Guayana de la Angostura del Orinoco, known simply as Angostura, a name that has persisted for over 80 years and is still remembered today.
In 1800, Baron Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland visited Angostura and from there they went through El Pao to Barcelona and then to Cumaná, thus ending the tour of Venezuela.
Independence Era
The Congress of Angostura, inaugurated on February 15, 1819, by the Liberator Simón Bolívar, under the inspiration of General Francisco de Miranda's Ideology, represented the second Constituent Congress of the Republic of Venezuela.
The public source identifies “Bolívar (state)” as state of Venezuela. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bolívar, state and Venezuela.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q191164. VIAF identifies the subject as 129030242. The Library of Congress control number is n82119672. Authority coordinates are 5.950, -63.333. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 1777, 1595 and 1617.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bolívar (state)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.