Petare is the eastern terminus of the metro and one of the largest informal settlements in Latin America — an enormous barrio of brick houses spread across the steep hills above the eastern motorway. The original colonial village of Petare, founded in 1621, still survives as a small grid of low whitewashed houses around the Plaza Sucre, with the white-and-yellow Church of Dulce Nombre de Jesús (1620) as one of the oldest church buildings in the country.
The colonial core is visitable by day on a short loop from the Petare metro station; the surrounding barrios are not. The view of the hills covered in light at night — millions of pinpricks rising in tiers toward the dark sky — is one of the defining images of contemporary Caracas, best seen from the eastern motorway looking south.