After the expulsion of the Dutch, carried out at the Insurrection of Pernambuco, Recife emerges as the most important city in Pernambuco, with a great commercial vocation influenced mainly by the Portuguese traders, the so-called 'mascates'. In the seventeenth century, the city was the headquarters of the New Holland colony for twenty-four years, with the Count Maurício de Nassau as one of the administrators. Older among the Brazilian state capitals, Recife emerged as 'The Sea Ribeira of the Ship Reefs' in 1537, in the main port area of the Captaincy of Pernambuco, the richest captaincy in Cologne Brazil, known throughout the commercial world of the time thanks to the sugarcane crop and the pernambuco woodland). The municipality was elected by MasterCard Worldwide research as one of the 65 most developed emerging-market cities in the world: only five brazilian cities entered the list, with Recife receiving the fourth position, after São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, and ahead of Curitiba. The capital of Pernambuco plays a strong centralizing role in its state and region: It houses the headquarters of organs and institutions such as Sudene, Electrobras Chesf, the Northeast Military Command, Cindacta III, the TRF of the 5th Region, among many others, and the largest number of foreign consulates outside the Rio-São Paulo axis, hosting Consulates-General of countries such as the United States, China, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. The city is the ninth most populous in the country, and its metropolitan region is the seventh in Brazil in population, besides being the third most densely populated metropolitan area in the country, behind only São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

On the other hand, the municipality, in isolation, has the 13th largest GDP in the country and the highest GDP per capita among the Northeast capital. Recife is the richest metropolis of the North-Northeast and seventh of Brazil, articulating, in its intermediate geographical region, 71 cities, which add up to a GDP of 135 billion reals.

Jaboatão dos Guararapes (S and O), São Lourenço da Mata (O), Camaragibe (O), Paulista (N and L) and Olinda (N and L).

Getúlio 1882-1930 by Lira Neto