Discussion
For many countries the capital city is the most obvious, stable point on the country's map: the largest and most important city, the permanent and unchangeable seat of power.
But that's not always the case, around the world there is a lot of #geoweirdness associated with capital cities.
Let's take a look ...
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3/ In the 1983 the president of the Ivory Coast 🇨🇮 picked his own tiny hometown, Yamoussoukro. No committee, no compromise, just personal preference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamoussoukro
He then built the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace there, a church larger than St Peter's in Rome, next to a presidential palace surrounded by a lagoon full of crocodiles. Abidjan, the country's actual largest city, still handles most of the real government business.
4/ South Africa 🇿🇦 has three capitals, not one.
Pretoria handles the executive, Cape Town the legislature, and Bloemfontein the judiciary, a compromise struck when four rival colonies unified in 1910. Johannesburg, the country's actual largest and richest city, isn't one of them.
@opencage
What's floating on the sky over Cape Town 🧐 ?
5/ Split capitals are more common than you'd think.
🇧🇴 Bolivia's Sucre is the official constitutional capital, but the president, cabinet, and most of parliament actually operate out of La Paz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucre
🇳🇱 The Netherlands does something similar: Amsterdam is the constitutional capital and where the king is sworn in, but the government, parliament, and the king's actual residence are all in The Hague.
6/ Germany 🇩🇪 never fully finished its move of capital after reunification.
When Berlin (site of OpenCage HQ!) became the capital again, the 1994 Berlin-Bonn Act permanently kept six federal ministries headquartered in Bonn instead, each with a second office in Berlin.
Roughly a third of ministerial jobs are still based there today, generating tens of thousands of trips between the two cities every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_on_the_Capital_of_Germany
7/ Belize 🇧🇿 (then known as British Honduras) moved its capital inland after Hurricane Hattie destroyed about 75% of Belize City in 1961.
The new capital, Belmopan, sits 76 metres above sea level specifically to avoid the flooding that kept wrecking the coast. It's now the smallest national capital by population anywhere in the Americas.
8/ Many countries have a special territory/district for their capital. That is the case in the United States 🇺🇸
Washington DC was a perfect diamond, built from land ceded by the states Maryland and Virginia.
In 1846, under pressure from Alexandria residents and pro-slavery interests ahead of abolition in the District, Congress gave the entire Virginia half back. That's why DC's borders look oddly clipped on a map today, rather than a clean square.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocession
2/ Since WWI, 17 countries have moved their capital city, about one every five or six years.
Moving capital sounds dramatic, but the reasons and results are stranger than you'd expect.
Sometimes the new capital is purpose built for a fresh start, like when Brazil 🇧🇷 created Brasilia to escape the traffic of Rio de Janeiro.
Ironically Rio had briefly also previously (1808-21) been the capital of Portugal 🇵🇹
#geoweirdness