The site has been settled and abandoned more times than most cities can claim. Diego de Ordaz organized the first explorations of the Orinoco here in 1531. In 1591, Antonio de Berrio founded Santo Tome de Guayana at the confluence of the Caroni and Orinoco, near the indigenous village of Cachamay. Then the city began its cycle of destruction. Pirates and fortune hunters heading up the Orinoco in search of El Dorado sacked it repeatedly. In 1618, an English expedition dispatched by Walter Raleigh burned it to the ground. By 1764, the surviving residents gave up and relocated to Angostura -- now Ciudad Bolivar -- upstream. The site sat largely dormant for two centuries until 1961, when the Venezuelan government officially founded Ciudad Guayana by unifying the old settlement of San Felix with the new industrial zone growing around Puerto Ordaz.

Unlike most South American cities, which grew organically from colonial centers, Ciudad Guayana was drawn on paper before it was built on the ground. The Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana hired the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies to design the city's layout -- a bold experiment in applying North American urban planning to a tropical environment. The result is a city that feels distinctly different from its neighbors. Puerto Ordaz's residential neighborhoods feature subdivisions with cookie-cutter homes, paved sidewalks, and manicured lawns that would not look out of place in a Houston suburb. US Steel, which operated ironworks in the region during the 1960s and early 1970s, built entire neighborhoods for its American workers and their families. When Venezuela nationalized the steel industry, the company and its employees departed, but the suburban landscape they left behind remains.

Ciudad Guayana exists because of what lies beneath and around it. The city is the headquarters of Venezuela's primary aluminum manufacturers -- Alcasa, Venalum, and Bauxilum -- along with Ferrominera for iron ore processing and Sidor for steelmaking. The Caroni River, which bisects the city, powers a chain of hydroelectric dams that generate the majority of the nation's electricity. Two of those dams, Macagua and Caruachi, sit within city limits, and the massive Guri Dam lies about 100 kilometers upstream. With roughly one million people in its metro area, Ciudad Guayana ranks among Venezuela's largest cities and its most important shipping ports, with barges carrying iron, steel, and aluminum down the Orinoco to the Atlantic.

For a place built on heavy industry, Ciudad Guayana has a surprisingly dramatic natural landscape. The Caroni River drops through a series of waterfalls as it crosses the city, and two of them -- Cachamay Falls and Llovizna Falls -- are preserved in urban parks that offer an unexpected counterpoint to the smokestacks and shipping piers. At Cachamay Park, the river tumbles over rock ledges surrounded by tropical vegetation, within earshot of traffic. The Macagua Dam complex includes an ecomuseum and public park. From the Angosturita bridge near San Felix, visitors can watch the two rivers merge -- the Caroni's clear, tannin-dark water meeting the sediment-heavy Orinoco in a demarcation line so sharp it looks artificial.

Ciudad Guayana occupies an unusual position in Venezuelan life. It is industrial but scenic, planned but sprawling, modern but built on a site that has been fought over since the sixteenth century. The Orinoquia Bridge, opened in 2006 as the second-largest bridge in the country, connects the city to the states of Anzoategui and Monagas across the Orinoco. The city has produced Major League Baseball players -- Eugenio Suarez, Freddy Fermin, and Lenyn Sosa among them -- and hosts two Venezuelan Primera Division football clubs at the Cachamay stadium. Its engineering schools are considered among the best in Latin America. From Puerto Ordaz, travelers can reach the Orinoco Delta, Canaima National Park and its famous Angel Falls, and the colonial fortifications that still stand along the riverbank downstream. It is a gateway to some of Venezuela's most spectacular landscapes, built at the point where industry and wilderness share the same riverbank.