Capitals built from scratch
Some capitals were chosen to settle an argument. In Australia, Sydney and Melbourne both wanted to be the capital, so a new city was built between them. CANBERRA was designed by two American architects, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, who won an international competition in 1912, and it was planned around an artificial lake. In Canada, Queen Victoria was asked to pick between rival cities in 1857, and she chose OTTAWA, then a small lumber town, partly because it sat on the border between the English- and French-speaking parts of the country.
BRASILIA was built almost from nothing in the empty centre of Brazil in about four years and opened in 1960, to draw people inland from the crowded coast. Seen from above, its plan looks like an aeroplane or a bird with its wings spread, and many of its buildings were designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer.
Eastern capital, northern capital
Some capital names are simply directions. BEIJING means northern capital. TOKYO means eastern capital, a name given in 1868 when the emperor moved there from the old capital, Kyoto, to the west. SEOUL is an old Korean word that simply means capital.
BANGKOK is what foreigners call it; Thai people call it Krung Thep, city of angels, which is the first part of a full ceremonial name more than 160 letters long, often said to be the longest place name in the world. HELSINKI, LISBON, NAIROBI and LIMA each have their own stories too; Lima was founded by the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro in 1535.
Capitals that move, and countries with several
Capitals move more often than you might think. In 1991 Nigeria moved its government from crowded Lagos on the coast to Abuja, a new city built near the middle of the country. Kazakhstan moved its capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997, renamed it Nur-Sultan in 2019, then changed the name back to Astana in 2022. Myanmar quietly built a new capital, Naypyidaw, and moved its government there in 2005.
Indonesia is in the middle of the biggest move of all. Its capital, Jakarta, is so crowded and is sinking so fast, as water is pumped out from beneath it, that parts of it are expected to be underwater within decades. The government is building a new capital, Nusantara, in the forests of the island of Borneo. Egypt, too, is building a new administrative capital in the desert east of Cairo.
South Africa has three capitals: Pretoria, where the government works; Cape Town, where the parliament meets; and Bloemfontein, home of the highest court. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam is the official capital, but the government, parliament and king's working palace are in The Hague. Bolivia's seat of government, La Paz, at about 3,600 metres, is the highest in the world.
The grid holds the classic European capitals too, LONDON, PARIS, MADRID, BERLIN, ROME, ATHENS, DUBLIN, VIENNA, OSLO, WARSAW and PRAGUE, along with CAIRO and MOSCOW. Our countries page covers the nations themselves, and our world cities page the great cities that are not capitals.