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Ciudad Guayana is the largest city of Bolívar State in eastern Venezuela, with about 958,000 people in 2023, spread along the Orinoco where it is joined by the Caroní River. It was founded officially on 2 July 1961 by uniting the old town of San Félix on the east bank of the Caroní with Puerto Ordaz on the west bank, and was planned with the help of the Harvard–MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies.
The Spanish town of Santo Tomé de Guayana first stood near this confluence before pirate attacks forced it to move upstream to Angostura in 1764. The modern city grew as Venezuela's heavy industry center, with iron, steel and aluminum plants powered by the dams of the Caroní, which supply much of the country's electricity.
The city weaves its rivers into its landscape. Visitors come for the waterfalls of La Llovizna and Cachamay parks, the meeting of the dark Caroní with the Orinoco, the Orinoquia Bridge and the Macagua Dam with its eco museum, and use the city as a base for the Guri Dam, the Orinoco Delta and Canaima National Park.
Llovizna Falls is a waterfall on the Caroní River in Ciudad Guayana, close to its confluence with the Orinoco, and its name is Spanish for drizzle or spray. The Macagua Dam has reduced its flow, but the falls lie in the city center and can be reached through forest, on paths or by water.
La Llovizna Park in Ciudad Guayana is set on an island in the Caroní River with many streams and waterfalls, and forms part of the city's Caroní park with Cachamay and Loefling. Stone paths and bridges lead to its stone theater, to lagoons with boats for hire and to the falls.
Cachamay Park in Ciudad Guayana lies on the Caroní River in Puerto Ordaz and contains the Cachamay Falls, where the river runs in spectacular rapids. Santo Tomé de Guayana was first founded near the native village of Cachamay, and the park is one of the three parks of the Caroní park system.
Loefling Park in Ciudad Guayana is one of the three parks along the Caroní River, with La Llovizna and Cachamay, and keeps a small zoo of native animals such as capuchin monkeys. It is named for the 18th-century Swedish naturalist Pehr Löfling, who studied the nature of eastern Venezuela.
The confluence of the Caroní and Orinoco rivers lies within Ciudad Guayana, where the dark waters of the Caroní, colored by humic acids, meet the paler Orinoco and form a clear dividing line. The meeting can be seen along the river from the Angosturita bridge to the port of San Félix.
The Caroní River runs through Ciudad Guayana from south to north, splitting it into Puerto Ordaz on the west bank and San Félix on the east, with three bridges across it. Flowing 952 kilometers from the Kukenán tepui, it is the longest river entirely within Venezuela and a major blackwater river.
The Orinoquia Bridge at Ciudad Guayana opened on 13 November 2006 as the second crossing of the Orinoco after the Angostura Bridge. About 4.5 kilometers of structures carry four road lanes and a railway track, with two cable-stayed spans of 300 meters hung from four pylons 120 meters tall.
The Castles of Guayana stand on the right bank of the Orinoco about 35 kilometers from San Félix in Ciudad Guayana. The Castle of San Francisco de Asís was built from 1678 to 1685 on a rocky hill to guard against pirates, and the fort of San Diego de Alcalá was begun around 1747 on a rise above it.
The Macagua Dam, officially named after Antonio José de Sucre, crosses the Caroní River in Ciudad Guayana about 10 kilometers above its meeting with the Orinoco. It is 69 meters high and 3,537 meters long, and it feeds three power stations, the first of them built between 1956 and 1961.
The Caroní Ecomuseum is a museum at the Macagua Dam in Ciudad Guayana, created with a public park when easy access from the city center made the dam a tourist and educational destination. It stands beside the Plaza del Agua and is one of the main family attractions of Puerto Ordaz today.
The Caruachi Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Caroní River about 35 kilometers from the confluence at Ciudad Guayana and 59 kilometers below the Guri Dam. Its power plant of 2,160 megawatts was officially inaugurated in 2006, after the twelfth and final turbine unit entered service.
The Guri Dam on the Caroní River, about 100 kilometers upstream from Ciudad Guayana, is 7,426 meters long and 162 meters high. Begun in 1963, it holds back the Guri Reservoir of 4,250 square kilometers, and its power station was once the largest in the world. It stands in the Necuima Canyon.
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