Would you believe that a country once built an entire capital city from scratch in less than four years? That is exactly what Brazil did. On April 21, 1960, it opened a brand-new capital city called Brasilia. Before that, Brazil's capital was Rio de Janeiro on the Atlantic coast. But Brazil's leaders had a problem. Almost everyone lived near the ocean. The interior of the country was mostly empty. President Juscelino Kubitschek wanted to change that. He hired an architect named Oscar Niemeyer to design the new city. Niemeyer created buildings with curved white walls that looked like nothing anyone had seen before. The city was planned in the shape of an airplane from above. The "wings" held residential neighborhoods. The "body" held government buildings and offices. Workers built the entire city in just forty-one months. That is less than four years. Thousands of workers moved to the empty plateau and built roads, bridges, and buildings from scratch. When the city opened, people came from across Brazil. Today, Brasilia is home to nearly three million people. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its unique design.