The city of Maracaibo, (at some time so called New Zamora of the Lagoon of Maracaibo), is the capital of the State Zulia (Venezuela) and of the Municipality Maracaibo. There possesses an approximate population of 2.6 million inhabitants, turning, thereby, into the second city with more population into the whole Venezuela and the most extensive city of the country. Located in the west of the country, in areas of alluvial origin inside the depression of the Lake of Maracaibo in the shore northwest of the same one. The foundation of Maracaibo has been subject to historical differences originated in the fact that there were different the prominent figures and moments in which one tried to construct a real accession.
The first European approximation to this zone Alonso de Ojeda realized it, on August 24, 1499 who discovered the Lake of Maracaibo, together with Juan de la Cosa and Américo Vespucio.
The name of Venezuela assumes to them when they evoked the small Venice on having seen that the inhabitants were living in palafittes on the Lake and that the people were moving from a site(place) to other one by means of small bridges of wood and in canoes.
The city of Maracaibo was founded in three occasions. The first one, on September 8, 1529 for the German Ambrosio Alfinger, conqueror of the house Welser and the first governor of the Province of Venezuela, who divided in expedition from cardinal Choir in that moment of the above mentioned province. To the city the name of Villa Maracaibo
After the second unsuccessful(bankrupt) attempt in the year 1569 in which the city Rodrigo is re-founded as City on the part of the captain Alonso Pacheco, it(he,she) is not but in 1573 that the Governor Diego de Mazariegos decided to restore the population entrusting the above mentioned commission to the captain Pedro Maldonado. This way for 1574 the city was re-founded by the name of New Zamora of the Lagoon of MaracaiboMaracaibo is a very interesting city where the modernism and the tradition are mixed. The central hull, you support his houses of alive colors and his historical constructions that now can be comfortably visited from tourist streetcar.