An administrative centre is a term often used in several unitary states to refer to a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located.
In Russia, the term is applied to the inhabited localities which serve as a seat of government of entities of various levels. The only exception to this rule is the republics, for which the term "capital" is used to refer to the seat of government. The capital of Russia is also an entity to which the term "administrative centre" does not apply.
In the United Kingdom it is the centre of a local authority which is distinct from a historic county with a county town.
Famous quotes containing the word centre:
“To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen.... But to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)