Capital city is an area that specified by law or constitution, by the government of a country, or part of a country such as province, region, or state. Capital city usually but not always serves as the seat of the government. Most countries’ leaders and officials work in the capital city.
Usually but not always, capitals are the largest cities in the countries. For example, London is the capital city as well as largest city of United Kingdom, while Auckland is the capital city of New Zealand, which is second largest city.
There is an unusual case in Canada. Toronto serves as the capital city of the Province of Ontario, while Ottawa is the federal capital city of Canada. So Toronto becomes both a capital (of the Province of Ontario) and a non-capital (of Canada).
There are also cases that a country has multiple capital cities, each city is a capital city for certain purposes, and not one capital is prior to others. In Chile, Santiago and Valparaiso are both capitals cities, Santiago is the official capital and eat of national administrative and judicial bodies, while Valparaiso is the seat of national legislate; In South Africa, Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein are both capital cities, Pretoria is the administrative and executive capital, Cape Town is the legislative capital, Bloemfontein is the Judicial capital.
And there are small independent countries called city-states that treat their capital as the country itself. Such as Singapore is the capital of Singapore, same goes for Vatican City and Monaco.
And there are countries that don’t have a capital city at all. For example, Nauru is a country that doesn’t have its capital city, although the government seats in the district of Yaren, so we can see Yaren as de facto (but not de jure) capital.
It’s hard to believe there are so many things to say about this tiny subject. But for now we will leave the discovering to you. Take this CAPITALS QUIZ and challenge yourself to see if you can name all the Capital Cities of these 30 countries.
