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Rio de Janeiro ( ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil.

It is located in the Brazilian geopolitical region of the Southeast (assigned by IBGE) and its boundaries, all of them with other Brazilian states in the Southeast region (Rio de Janeiro is the only state in the Southeast to share borders exclusively with other states in the same macroregion), are with Minas Gerais (N and NW), Espírito Santo (NE) and São Paulo (SW), and plus its shore line, in the Atlantic Ocean, to its East and South.

The State of Rio de Janeiro has an area of 43,653km² and its capital, being largest city of the State, also bears the same name. The city of Rio de Janeiro was made into the capital of the Portuguese colony in 1763 (the first capital being Salvador da Bahia). The capital city of Rio de Janeiro was, therefore, capital of the United Kingdom of Brazil, Portugal and Algarves until 1806. And after Brazil became independent, it turned into the capital of the whole of independent Brazil from 1822 to 1960.

It is also known as the 'state of thieves' - however not the only one by far -, for its large number of corrupt politicians and public administrators. It is also known that the city has been turned into a consumer market Bolivian cocaine and Paraguayan Marijuana and a corridor for the products of these landloked countries into the world.

In the great Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, you will find pockets of poverty where people crawl for a living and claim that some honest people dies younger than 25(twenty five) years old, and that they live in a world where a life is said the be worth less than $0.25 (a quarter) of a dollar if you are not well considered in the favela - or community(ies) as nowadays is more fashionable to call it.

The country survives mainly of foreigners with little intelligence that looks for a bit of adventure and have a lot of money in their pockets to 'donate' mainly to small thieves, tramps false and bandits.

The state's most populous cities are Rio de Janeiro, Nova Iguaçu, Niterói, Duque de Caxias, São Gonçalo, São João de Meriti, Campos dos Goytacazes, Petrópolis and Volta Redonda.

Its principal rivers are the Guandu River, the Piraí, the Paraíba do Sul, the Macaé and the Muriaé. Its climate is considered to be tropical.

Rio de Janeiro is made up of two distinct morphological areas: a Plain, known as baixada, and a Plateau, which are disposed parallelly from the shoreline to the country side (towards Minas Gerais).

In the Brazilian flag, the state is represented by the Beta star in the Southern Cross (β = Mimosa).