This is a list of sovereign states whose capital is not their largest city.
Country | Capital | Population | Largest city | Population | Ratio | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Australia | Canberra | 345,000 | Sydney | 4,627,345 | 13.0 | Although Canberra has always been Australia's Capital City, the national parliament met in Melbourne, Victoria until 1927. Melbourne is Australia's 2nd most populous city (4,137,432) |
Belize | Belmopan | 16,400 | Belize City | 70,000 | 4.27 | Belize City was the capital until 1970. |
Benin | Porto-Novo | 223,500 | Cotonou | 761,100 | 3.4 | Cotonou is the de facto capital with seat of government. |
Bolivia | Sucre | 225,000 | Santa Cruz de la Sierra | 1,594,926 | 7.1 | La Paz is the de facto capital with seat of government, and also is at the center of the country's largest metropolitan area. |
Brazil | Brasília | 2,557,158 | São Paulo | 11,150,249 | 4.55 | Brasília is a planned city, inaugurated in 1960, and serving as the Brazilian capital since then. Rio de Janeiro, the former capital, was the capital of Brazil from 1763 until 1960 (and largest city in Brazil from 1654 to 1954). São Paulo has never been the capital, but became the most populous city in Brazil in 1954, a position it has held since then. As of the 2010 Brazilian census, Brasília is the fifth most populous city in Brazil, and the seventh largest metropolitan area. |
Cameroon | Yaoundé | 1,430,000 | Douala | 2,000,000 + | 1.4 | Yaoundé is the second largest city of Cameroon. |
Canada | Ottawa | 812,129 | Toronto | 2,503,281 | 3.08 | Toronto was the capital of the united Province of Canada from 1849 to 1852 and 1856–1858. |
People's Republic of China | Beijing | 22,000,000 | Shanghai | 23,210,000 | 1.055 | Beijing is the second largest city of China. Shanghai is the largest city in China and the world, (though not the largest metropolitan area in the world). |
Republic of China | Taipei | 2,650,968 | New Taipei | 3,916,451 | 1.48 | Both cities are in Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area with Taipei surrounded entirely by New Taipei. |
Côte d'Ivoire | Yamoussoukro | 200,659 | Abidjan | 4,348,000 | 21.7 | Abidjan was the capital until 1983. |
Ecuador | Quito | 1,397,698 | Guayaquil | 2,600,000 | 1.86 | Quito is the second largest city of Ecuador. |
India | New Delhi | 295,000 | Mumbai | 13,830,884 | 46.88 | New Delhi is part of the Delhi metropolitan area which has 16,753,235 inhabitants. |
Kazakhstan | Astana | 743,014 | Almaty | 1,450,095 | 1.95 | Almaty was the capital from 1927 to 1997. |
Liechtenstein | Vaduz | 5,109 | Schaan | 5,806 | 1.14 | |
Malawi | Lilongwe | 440,500 | Blantyre | 646,235 | 1.47 | |
Malta | Valletta | 6,000 | Birkirkara | 21,000 | 3.5 | |
Federated States of Micronesia | Palikir | 5,000 | Weno | 13,000 | 1.4 | |
Monaco | Monaco (Monaco-Ville) | 1,034 | Monte Carlo | 15,507 | 15.0 | other cities-historical communes of country (La Condamine - 12,187; Fontvieille - 3,292) larger than capital also; at counts as cities-new quarters capital smaller than all other nine also (largest of them Larvotto - 5,443); all communes and quarters merged into one city de facto |
Montenegro | Cetinje | 15,000 | Podgorica | 136,000 | 9.1 | Podgorica is the de facto capital with seat of government. |
Morocco | Rabat | 627,000 | Casablanca | 4,150,000 | 6.62 | Rabat is the second largest city of Morocco. |
Myanmar | Naypyidaw | 925,000 | Yangon | 4,346,000 | 4.7 | Yangon was the capital until 2006. |
New Zealand | Wellington | 386,000 | Auckland | 1,500,000 | 3.45 | Auckland was the capital 1841–1865, and Russell in 1840–41. |
Nigeria | Abuja | 778,567 | Lagos | 7,937,932 | 10.2 | Lagos was the capital until 1991. |
Pakistan | Islamabad | 1,740,000 | Karachi | 18,000,000 | 10.28 | Karachi was the capital of 1947–1958. |
Palau | Ngerulmud | 271 | Koror | 11,200 | 41.32 | Koror was the capital until 2006. |
Philippines | Manila | 1,652,171 | Quezon City | 2,761,720 | 1.67 | Quezon City was the capital from 1948 until 1976. Both cities are in the Manila metropolitan area with Quezon City bordering Manila on the northeast. |
San Marino | San Marino | 4,251 | Serravalle | 10,532 | 2.48 | |
South Africa | Pretoria | 2,345,908 | Johannesburg | 3,888,180 | 1.66 | Cape Town (pop. 3.5 mln) and Bloemfontein (pop. 370,000) serve as legislative and judicial capitals, respectively. |
Sudan | Khartoum | 2,207,794 | Omdurman | 2,395,159 | 1.08 | Wikipedia articles on Khartoum and Omdurman contradict this. |
Sri Lanka | Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte | 115,826 | Colombo | 642,163 | 5.54 | Colombo was the capital until 1982. |
Switzerland | Bern | 122,925 | Zürich | 365,098 | 2.97 | |
Syria | Damascus | 1,711,000 | Aleppo | 2,301,570 | 1.35 | |
Tanzania | Dodoma | 324,347 | Dar es Salaam | 2,497,940 | 7.70 | Dar es Salaam was the capital until 1974. |
Trinidad and Tobago | Port of Spain | 49,000 | Chaguanas | 67,400 | 1.37 | |
Turkey | Ankara | 3,763,591 | Istanbul | 12,782,960 | 3.4 | Istanbul was the capital of the Ottoman Empire until 1922. |
United Arab Emirates | Abu Dhabi | 896,751 | Dubai | 2,262,000 | 2.52 | |
United States | Washington, D.C. | 601,723 | New York City | 8,391,881 | 13.94 | New York was the capital 1785–1790 and the largest city in 1790 (narrowly edging out the next capital, Philadelphia, which served as capital from 1790 to 1800). Philadelphia was the nation's second-largest city when it was the capital. |
Vietnam | Hanoi | 6,500,000 | Ho Chi Minh City | 7,123,340 | 1.1 | Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, was the capital of South Vietnam prior to reunification. |
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, countries, capital, largest and/or city:
“Sheathey call him Scholar Jack
Went down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal-passersall.”
—Joseph I. C. Clarke (18461925)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (18991961)
“The American adolescent, then, is faced, as are the adolescents of all countries who have entered or are entering the machine age, with the question: freedom from what and at what price? The American feels so rich in his opportunities for free expression that he often no longer knows what it is he is free from. Neither does he know where he is not free; he does not recognize his native autocrats when he sees them.”
—Erik H. Erikson (19041994)
“We make needless ado about capital punishment,taking lives, when there is no life to take.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The largest business in American handled by a woman is the Money Order Department of the Pittsburgh Post-office; Mary Steel has it in charge.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (18421903)
“Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the countryit had all been done in our name.... The French city ... had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.”
—James Fenton (b. 1949)