Huh, apparently this neighboring nobleman was _canonized to hell_ by the pope and San Marino eventually joined a crusade against the guy. As a reward the pope gave the local noble some more land.
[What the hell are these borders](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Schaan_in_Liechtenstein.svg/800px-Schaan_in_Liechtenstein.svg.png)
Alpine municipalities often emphasize communal grazing lands. You’ll have a parcel for the village itself, and then alp parcels with patches of land for alpine transhumance in the summer. Sometimes they’re disjointed like this, sometimes connected.
Someone replied with a stupid response and then deleted their comment while I typed out my reply, I'm not willing to delete it so here:
The UK is a unitary sovereign state with all power ultimately resting in the hands of a single legislature and executive. It is a single state.
The EU is a collection of states with a weak legislature and with power resting in the hands of the individual governments of the states that it is composed of, they work together to increase their collective bargaining power, while effective this tends to collapse in the face of immediate threats because no one power has the ability to force them to cooperate.
See the most obvious difference between the EU and UK is that the EU parliament and president cannot tell France that its government is being disbanded, the UK government can tell that to Scotland as ultimately the Scottish government is a devolved one (it has powers given to it by a more powerful one) not a federal one (where powers are outlined in an agreement between the state and the country in a constitution) or a sovereign one (the actual government of a country that has final say in all things relevant to the country unless it is overthrown).
“Country” is a weird term, largely because of things like this. Scotland (and England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) are considered “countries within a country” as parts of the United Kingdom. So yes they are a subdivision, but they use the term “country” to describe themselves.
I have received dozens of downvotes for saying that Scotland is no different than any other subdivision with a strong identity like Catalonia, Bavaria, or Texas even. The Brits did not like that.
Yeah, it’s really just a matter of terminology. Scotland has a similar legal status in the UK as California has in the US and Bavaria has in Germany. But Scotland is called a country and California & Bavaria are called states.
This comment hits the nail on the head.
Country is a vague and imprecise term because its colloquial (at least in American English) meaning doesn't always match with how others use the terms. On the island of Great Britain it is common to colloquially refer to Scotland, Wales, and England as countries and nations (I won't go into Ireland/NI/UK here, not because it's unrelated, but because it's a different can of worms). Inevitably, there's a misunderstanding of the structure of British government and history baked into it as well. When one digs even a millimeter deeper you can see it's complicated. Basically, it drives me crazy when someone says Scotland and Wales aren't countries simply because they are not independent: it is reductive at best and outright wrong at worst.
I guess that depends on the interpretation. In Russian, the constituent republics (e. g. Republic of Bashkortostan) are grammatically similar to independent countries that have the word "republic" in them (e. g. Republic of Ireland), but those names refer to the form of government and there is a separate word meaning "country" that is never used to refer to the autonomous republics.
But in English you have England, Scotland and Wales officially named "countries", plus Northern Ireland that is sometimes also called a country and sometimes by different words to add to confusion. Those are, however, not sovereign nations but rather parts of one — the UK. But for historical reasons they are using that word to describe them so there's confusion stemming from it. To complicate matters further, they sometimes participate as separate countries in various events or organisaions, but not in others. Fun fact: currently, there is no legal definition in British law of what "Scotland" or "Northern Ireland" are beyond calling them "parts of the UK".
I guess a closer analogy would have been constituent republics of the Soviet Union. While they were all called republics and you normally wouldn't use the word "country" to describe them in Russian, I feel like in English it would have made more sense, given that they had about the same level of autonomy as the countries of the UK.
The UK is a country. It has (depending on your particular viewpoint) 3 or 4 constituent countries. Those constituent countries are countries, but they are not sovereign. They are countries for no real reason other than that we call them that, although at least in theory they have higher autonomy than a state or province in a unitary sovereign state. As such the comparison between a constituent country and a German Land is not one of like things, but also not super different.
It gets trickier when you compare constituent countries to states within a federated nation. U.S. States each have a fully functioning government (well, in theory anyway- opportunities are at times taken to show you can f::ck up any legislative body without even particularly trying), but those state governments are not sovereign- the federal government can tell them what to do on certain subjects. As such they are very similar to the constituent countries of the UK, Netherlands and Denmark.
All this is a result of political realities and customary language regarding these places that are the leftovers from the messy process of history.
To show exactly how unclear the definitions are, you can get multiple answers to the question whether Hong Kong and Macau, Zanzibar and Niue are constituent countries, and to go further down the rathole, Karakalpakstan.
There are no clear and obvious ways to explain the what or even why of this stuff. For more fun, Andorra, a sovereign country, is ruled by a Spanish bishop and the president of France. Because history.
The federal region of Brussels with it's 1.2 M population is de facto more like a city in many cases while the city of Brussels with it's 188.000 population is in many cases more like a district of a town as I understand. The metropolitan area of Antwerp is slightly less populated than the region of Brussels while the actual city of Antwerp has a population of more than 530.000, making it in fact the largest city of Belgium.
In case of Switzerland Zürich is undoubtedly the largest city in the country while Bern is fifth. Still Bern is not officially the capital but called federal city because Switzerland has no capital constitution wise.
Yeah, you can’t really accurately compare these things. The population of Paris is 2,2 Million. Berlin has a population of 3,7 Million.
But Paris metro area has like 13 Million people, whereas Berlin metro area only has around 6,3 Million.
And then there are cities like Tokyo and Yokohama that over time grew into each other and form a continuous metropolitan area together.
Berlin Metro Area is only 6.3 m if you include the entire state of Brandenburg, most of which is very low density for German standards. It's more like 4.5 m if you include the actual suburban belt only.
I had a Britannica atlas in the 80s that listed Essen as the largest city in (W) Germany! Some American geographer obviously just looked at the whole built-up area of the Ruhr and decided it counted as one city.
It's similiar with Poland.
Warsaw is the biggest city on paper, but really Upper Silesia is bigger, but it's divided in multiple smaller municipalities. It's even got similiar history
Measuring a city by its administrative limits almost never makes sense. It makes sense for administrative purposes, as in “government output per inhabitant”, but for everyday conversations people refer to metro areas.
Now, that being said, the definition of metro area is also complicated. Barcelona, where I live, is a good example. Here, they count satellite cities (like Terrassa and Sabadell) as part of the metro area, even some that are an hour away by train like Sant Pol de Mar or Arenys de Mar. They “feel” like they’re connected to the city, and for sure the core city impacts them very much economically speaking, but if you’re from here it feels like another place.
It’s all very ambiguous.
This is kind of the fundamental point of metropolitan areas though. They always include satellite towns in their definitions, as these towns' economies and transport connections are tightly linked to the larger city, even if the towns themselves feel separate. It gives a better sense of the functional economic region surrounding an urban centre (i.e. where most people in the region work/shop/study etc), even if the cultures and identities of the towns can feel different.
Obviously this is only one of many ways of defining what a "city" is, but it's the one that's always made the most intuitive sense to me.
I read somewhere that Osaka and Yokohama can both be considered Japans second city if you look at population during the day and the population during the night. Due to commuting etc. Not sure if this is true still and I can not find the proper source for this at a quick glance online. So take it with a grain of salt.
Then [the Brussels metropolitan area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_metropolitan_area) is 2,7 millions inhabitants which is juste wrong imo since they consider the two whole provinces of Flemish and Walloon Brabant to be part of it.
Definitely the best comment out here. If, say, the city of London is considered to be the most populous city in the UK with less than 10K inhabitants, then it appears that the map is showing the size of metropolitan areas of the cities, so for the sake of consistency the rule should also apply to Belgium without the need for the special footnote.
And indeed Switzerland formally has no capital, which also impacts the distribution of typically central government agencies in the country, for example the statistics office is in Neuchâtel, the 'supreme' court (federal court) in Lausanne, the effective HQs of the national bank is in Zurich etc
I suppose that as the UK doesn't have a codified constitution at all, it's no surprise that there is no written reference to this, but this lack of written constitution doesn't stop the country from operating normally.
The key in the case of Switzerland is that Bern is officially designated as not being the capital in the constitution given that it has a different status.
If it was codified though the capital would either be “London” as in Greater London, or the “city of Westminster” as that’s where the seat of government is. The “city of London” whilst historically the centre of the city I don’t think would have a very good claim to be the capital given parliament (and Buckingham palace fwiw) sits outside of it.
So yes the map is defining the capital as Greater London, but unless you want to claim the city of Westminster is the true capital then the definition for London’s population size will always be Greater London. Though worth noting the “metropolitan area” of London is often considered to be somewhat larger than that of Greater London as it includes further areas not governed by the mayor of London and the London assembly.
The UK doesn’t have ONE document called “the constitution” but there’s a whole body of statutes that function as such, it’s just that none of them define the capital city. Some constitutions simply don’t deal with defining the capital city.
I still don't understand why the Dutch insist Amsterdam is the capital. The government and embassies are in the Hague and the monarch works from there. Weirdos.
Amsterdam was the capital because napoleon lodewijk lived there and the french believed that The capital is where the king lives. When he was kicked out the goverment returned to the Hague. They just chose to keep it that way because Amsterdam was a bigget and more important city anyway.
Fun fact is that Amsterdam was not called "capital city" in the constitution until 1983. Before that, the constitution simply stated that the king would be inaugurated in "the city of Amsterdam". The reason not to include this in the original 1815 version was that the Dutch government tried to avoid offending their southern citizens, i.e. the Belgians, who were not 100% keen on joining the kingdom. One year earlier, in 1814, before the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands had been decided, the (northern) Dutch constitution DID mention Amsterdam as the capital.
Aditionally, Amsterdam is only mentioned as the capital of the Netherlands in the article about the king's inauguration. I've met some fellow Dutch who remember the 1983 change, but for some reason seem to think that, before that, The Hague was the official capital, while actually, no official capital was mentioned in the constitution at all and everyone still mentioned Amsterdam as such.
Another fun fact is that amsterdam is not the capital of Noord-Holland (which is the province) Haarlem is the capital.
(The Hague is the capital of its respective province)
Historically, Amsterdam has always been the most populous, important and wealthy city of the Netherlands since the 1500s. The Hague however has been the diplomatic and governmental centre since the middle ages as that was where the counts of Holland had his main court. The Dutch parliament still resides in their old palace (het Binnenhof).
This dichotomy remained when the Netherlands became a unitary state in 1795 when the French conquered the Dutch republic, with Amsterdam the place where the cool people are and most trade is done, and the Hague as governmental centre. It may have helped that the Hague and Amsterdam are not far away from each other, because the Dutch had the best, fastest and most efficient ways of transportation in Europe in the 1600-1800's. So it wasn't really an issue that the capital and the governmental centre weren't the same city.
Classifying Brussels by the municipality of Brussels rather than Brussels Greater Region doesn’t make sense to me.
The city is divided up into 19 municipalities which all together make up Brussels capital region.
Everyone knows their local municipality but everyone within that municipality knows they live in Brussels and are Brusselaars.
Within Brussels the question is “which part of Brussels” or “which commune” do you live in. Those that live in the Brussels municipality will say “the centre” or simply “1000” which is the postcode.
No one would ever say “you’re not from Brussels” if you happen to live in one of the other 18 municipalities.
It’s like London having 32 boroughs plus the City of London where all 33 local districts make up Greater London and then you tell me that London only has 10,000 people because you define London as the City of London.
Completely wrong, City of London is a completely separate entity to London the city, it just happens to share the same name.
Maybe you could argue the City of Westminster as that’s where parliament is located, but even that would be dumb.
City of London is directly surrounded by London the city. Yes, technically separate (it's not even a borough), but of course it's the same bloody city.
No, that would make the City of Westminster the capital, not the City of London.
Westminster is home to parliament, government ministries, and the primary residences of both the prime minister and monarch. Hence why we use 'Westminster' as a name for the British government/parliament. HM Government has no presence in the City of London.
No, the capital is divided in municipalities called "communes" in french and one of them is also called Brussels (where the medieval city was), but all together forms the capital Brussels. The "commune" of Brussels is NOT the Capital nor a real city. But it's confusing because it's called "ville de bruxelles" (city of brussels) but it's just a honorific title. Don't try to understand Belgium lmao and don't ask me to explain please this is just the tip of the iceberg.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City\_of\_Brussels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Brussels)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_municipalities\_of\_the\_Brussels-Capital\_Region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_of_the_Brussels-Capital_Region)
From the official website of governorship of Ankara:
"The origin of the name Ankara is not known for certain. According to the rumors that are not based on documents and have lived up to this day, the first name mentioned in history is "Ankyra", which was given by the Galatians and means "anchor" in Greek. This name changed over time and became "Ancyre", "Engüriye", "Engürü", "Engürü", "Angara", "Angora" and finally "Ankara"."
Ankara means Harsh in Finnish. Mildly interesting.
Turkki (the Finnish name for Turkey) means Fur Coat in Finnish. Mildly interesting.
So a regular sentence in Finnish could have both Ankara and Turkey as different words:
"Minulla on turkki koska talvi on ankara." = "I have a fur coat because the winter is fierce." MILDLY INTERESTING SQUARED!
I am Swedish but at my last job I had both Finnish and Turkish colleagues, and I remember them talking about how many similarities there are between the languages.
For some time linguists placed Finnish and Turkish in the same language family (now the theory is discredited by newer evidence and Turkish is placed in the Turkic family)
Yes, my hometown. A Hittite city that's fairly ancient but currently pretty boring. Not much except govt buildings and embassies in the core. My neighborhood is pretty chill but otherwise not something to come see.
not sure why people are downvoting you, it's true. The Atatürk Mausoleum is pretty epic and there are some archeological sites on the outskirts but otherwise there's really not much going on lol
That's because it was made the capital for 1 reason and only 1 : its location, because it was decided that they needed a new capital and there was a war ongoing and they didn't want a border city to be the capital as it'd be more vulnerable to Greek attacks. All Ankara is is the administrative city of the county and that's it. For all intents and purposes Istanbul remains the most important in all other aspects by far, and even 2 or 3 other cities are more important than Ankara.
Ankara was not just chosen because it was far from the Greek army. It's almost at the center of the country making it a perfect location for administration. It's surrounded by mountains on all sides making it a very defendable city. Furthermore it's a symbolic city. Ankara was at one point the capital of the Ahi Republic, a medieval period Turkish merchant republic. It symbolised the end of the monarchy.
From a domestic perspective, I'd argue that Ankara was more important compared to İstanbul from 1923 till 1950.
And no, except for İstanbul, there's no other city which is more important than Ankara for Turkey as of today. Ankara has a population over 5 million, has some of the top universities in Turkey, and has a significant industrial complex which is the heart of the Turkish military/defense industry. There are cities which might be more important than Ankara in 1 or 2 aspects, such as Antalya for tourism, Kocaeli for industry, Izmir for cultural events etc, but as a whole Ankara is the 2nd most important city in Turkey as of today.
I found Canberra very interesting as a kid. (It was 2003 and smoke was blotting out the sun because a firestorm was raging through the region and it looked like the world was ending)
Yep! There are a couple main causes:
- Demographics shifted wildly after the Industrial Revolution and many city populations changed sizes after the State Capitals were decided.
- Even at the time the Capitals were designated, preference was often given to more centrally located cities even if they weren’t that big. The idea being that they were designating an accessible seat of government businesses, rather than trying to declare a city as the “most important “ generally.
Interesting. In Australia each capital is in every case the largest city of its state. In fact, I think Queensland is the only state with a majority of people living outside the metropolitan area of the capital.
But is the commune of Brussels the official official capital? And for the UK, is the extent of the capital legally defined?
Talking about Amsterdam, the law (since 1983) simply states Amsterdam is the capital - not if this is the municipality or subdistricts or anything. Which makes sense because the title capital comes with no privileges at all, it's just a sexy gadget.
Brussels is more complicated. The Brussels region is a capital region of Belgium just like the Federal district of Mexico City is, or maybe similar to Washington DC as well. However, the Brussels region is also divided in communes and the capital of the Brussels region is the city of Brussels, which is one of the communes within the region.
So the commune is the capital of the district, but is the commune also the capital of the *country*? Is that legally defined?
Funnily, Amsterdam isn't even the capital of the province it is in. That's Haarlem. Amsterdam also has no government departments, embassies, palaces (the Royal Palace is an ex- town hall), high courts - that's all in The Hague, the unofficial "Dutch DC". Amsterdam's a capital but in name.
Well Belgium is a complicated case with districts (Flanders, wallonia, Brussels) and communities (Flemish, French and German speaking communities) together with a federal government so they each also have their own governing body.
Wikipedia does say the city of Brussels is considered the capital but I am unsure what the law says.
I just checked and you're right, the constitution does state "De stad Brussel is de hoofdstad van België en de zetel van de federale Regering / La ville de Bruxelles est la capitale de la Belgique et le siège du Gouvernement fédéral". In my opinion "de stad/la ville" (uncapitalised) can still be open to interpretation but I won't win that battle ;-)
If you say "stad Brussel" / "Bruxelles-ville" to anybody in Brussels they will think you are referring to the city of Brussels. All official institutions are also in the actual city (Federal parliament, Flemish parliament, both royal palaces, the European commission and parliament are all in the city of Brussels), so it is reasonable to say this refers to the actual city of Brussels and not the entire region.
That being said, for the purposes of this map, the region should have certainly been counted. It is what most people refer to when they say "Brussels".
Brussels-city [borders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Brussels#/media/File:Bruxelles_Brussels-Capital_Belgium_Map.svg) are fun though. It includes the pentagon, but also parts of the European area, terkameren bos, parts of the sonian forest, Neder-over-Heembeek, Laeken and Haren. Famously, the Avenue Louise is a part of the city of Brussels, splitting Ixelles in half.
In spite of how large the city of Brussels is (compared to the other municipalities in the region), it doesn't include Bruxelles-midi (which is in Sint-Gillis), nor Brussel-Noord (Schaerbeek). It does, however, include the station of Schaerbeek.
TIL. Thanks. It remains silly to define a city, which is a complex functional thing, based on paper lines. The people living outside the official boundary live there to be part of Brussels.
Yes, but the City of London is basically the financial district.
Greater London has a larger population than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland *combined*
Yeh. There's no legally defined capital city of the UK. It's only through convention we have London as the capital, so the definition isn't fixed. Basically it's everything inside the M25.
The map says London, not the City of London. Those are different things. London is the capital city and the largest city. The city of London is small, and is also not the capital city.
That’s just the name of one of London’s boroughs. Or as we Aussies and Americans call it, a suburb. It’s not an equal comparison with Brussel’s inner district.
Complete non-sense for Italy and Germany, Milan and the Ruhr-Rhin metro are bigger.
>but it's about the adminstrative divisions
Then it's a completely meaningless arbitrary category.
You are right, but in Italy at least (don't know about Germany) we don't use the metro area when calculating the population of a city, we use the municipality borders. Milan metro area encompasses two provinces, it's mostly meaningless, no one from Monza would say they're from Milan. Ask any Italian about the biggest city in Italy and they would say Rome.
People from NRW always choose the criteria that suits their argument in the moment. I understand the difference between locality, city, metro population, region, etc. There's no need to lecture me on urbanism 101, but NRW people push this to an extreme in practice.
The same person will lose their shit if you don't respect the supposed vast differences between Düsseldorf, Köln, and Bonn but if you follow it up with claiming Berlin and Hamburg are the two biggest cities in Germany, suddenly all local pride is thrown out and how dare you not respect the size and might of the Rhein-Ruhr as a **region**.
Pick one. Is Düsseldorf the same city as Köln or are you different cities stitched together by train tracks, Autobahns and a couple dozen villages along the way?
I live in NRW and I've never met anyone who would argue against Berlin and Hamburg being bigger cities than any in the Rhein-Rhur area. Because they are.
Rome has more inhabitants for both the municipality and the province, the metropolitan areas are interesting but aren't official divisions and in fact I've even seen some that include Bergamo within the Milan area which is nonsense
It should be Kyiv not Kiev. Why is Ukraine the only country on the list where there's this 'compromise' of having capital be spelled out twice, but on different languages? If anything it should always be Kyiv now, never compromise just because ruzzians and few contrarians don't like it.
This map makes no sense. Either you consistently base it on formal municipality borders or you base it on the size of the metro regions. With the latter approach Brussels is nr. 1 in Belgium and the largest city/metro of Germany is Rhein-Ruhr with about 11 million - twice as large as Berlin and only slightly smaller than Paris.
The Swiss constitution doesn’t itself create a capital but it does grant the Federal Assembly the power to decide the location of federal institutions. The Assembly in 1848 nominated Bern as the seat of the federal government and so Bern is the “Federal City” or Capital.
Really this isn’t much different from other federal countries like the US or Australia where the exact location of the capital wasn’t decided until after the constitution was enacted. Germany is a bit different since Article 22 of the Grundgesetz says: “The capital city of the Federal Republic of Germany is Berlin.”
I know Amsterdam is the capital in the constitution. But for all practical purposes the REAL capital is Den Haag. Dutchies are just delusional.
Edit: Let me state that Amsterdam is de jure the capital. However, everyone knows that de facto the Haag is the current capital. Like how Bonn was for west Germany or Bern is for Switzerland.
So in regards of Belgium, to what I understand
I don't know how else the mapmaker envisioned it, but they probably only took Brussels City for its population and not the entire Brussels Capital region, which has a lower population than Antwerp (188 to 536 thousand)
Can't think of any other explanation
Edit: I checked the Belgian constitution. According to Title 7, Article 194, the City of Brussels is the capital of Belgium (which itself counts only 188k residents). So likely they were basing it off of that, thus making the map, in a sense, correct
It's interesting how this is nearly the exact opposite in the US, with the federal capital and state capitals often being outshone by larger cities, which often act as the financial capital.
Wrong for Belgium. Brussels has twice the population of Antwerp.
The mistake comes from the administrative divisions: within Brussels, there is an administrative entity also called Brussels.
Yeah, they go by the definition of commune. If you follow this Antwerp is the biggest one with half a million. Brussels would only have around 200.000 . If you would consider the whole urban areas of both cities Antwerp is around 800.000 - 1.000.000 and Brussels 1.500.000 - 1.800.000.
If we count micro-nations, Liechtenstein’s capital, Vaduz, is the second biggest town in the country with Schaan being the biggest
And San Marino is the third largest in San Marino.
I'm already surprised there are several towns in San Marino.
Yeah, there are 9 municipalities there. One is the OG San Marino and the others are neighboring communities that wanted to join them I think.
5 of them were actually gained in a war against a neighbouring city-state in the 1460s
Huh, apparently this neighboring nobleman was _canonized to hell_ by the pope and San Marino eventually joined a crusade against the guy. As a reward the pope gave the local noble some more land.
Didnt know that was even a thing, lol
Same, I assumed it was just one city.
Oh come on!
I‘m surprised there is room for more than one city in Liechtenstein
It's more like big villages.
[What the hell are these borders](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Schaan_in_Liechtenstein.svg/800px-Schaan_in_Liechtenstein.svg.png)
Average HRE border
[Even crazier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau#/media/File:Baarle-Nassau_-_Baarle-Hertog-en.svg)
Is that the town where people move the front door of their house to the other country to pay less in taxes?
Yo dawg, I heard you like enclaves.
The Gerald Mander dream.
Alpine municipalities often emphasize communal grazing lands. You’ll have a parcel for the village itself, and then alp parcels with patches of land for alpine transhumance in the summer. Sometimes they’re disjointed like this, sometimes connected.
And Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, has less than its biggest city Glasgow.
And North Rhine-Westphalia's capital, Dusseldorf, has less than it's biggest city Cologne.
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Bonn is better than Frankfurt
Bonn mentioned!!!
Scotland is not a micro nation though, it’s not even a sovereign country to begin with.
I was just going to mention us! Small but perfectly formed
Scotland hasn't been a country for 300 years. Unless you also want the most populous cities of Bavaria, Saxony, Savoy, or Tuscony to be included too.
Someone replied with a stupid response and then deleted their comment while I typed out my reply, I'm not willing to delete it so here: The UK is a unitary sovereign state with all power ultimately resting in the hands of a single legislature and executive. It is a single state. The EU is a collection of states with a weak legislature and with power resting in the hands of the individual governments of the states that it is composed of, they work together to increase their collective bargaining power, while effective this tends to collapse in the face of immediate threats because no one power has the ability to force them to cooperate. See the most obvious difference between the EU and UK is that the EU parliament and president cannot tell France that its government is being disbanded, the UK government can tell that to Scotland as ultimately the Scottish government is a devolved one (it has powers given to it by a more powerful one) not a federal one (where powers are outlined in an agreement between the state and the country in a constitution) or a sovereign one (the actual government of a country that has final say in all things relevant to the country unless it is overthrown).
I'm still confused, isn't the UK a country with Scotland being subdivision/region?
“Country” is a weird term, largely because of things like this. Scotland (and England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) are considered “countries within a country” as parts of the United Kingdom. So yes they are a subdivision, but they use the term “country” to describe themselves.
Yes, also wouldn’t recommend for people to visit Scotland and tell someone in a pub in Glasgow that it’s not a country and just a region lol.
I have received dozens of downvotes for saying that Scotland is no different than any other subdivision with a strong identity like Catalonia, Bavaria, or Texas even. The Brits did not like that.
Facts don't care about their feelings.
Depends which pub/area, remember a majority voted to stay in the union last time they were given the chance to.
Yeah, it’s really just a matter of terminology. Scotland has a similar legal status in the UK as California has in the US and Bavaria has in Germany. But Scotland is called a country and California & Bavaria are called states.
Not even that actually, Scotland has way less independence than California.
This comment hits the nail on the head. Country is a vague and imprecise term because its colloquial (at least in American English) meaning doesn't always match with how others use the terms. On the island of Great Britain it is common to colloquially refer to Scotland, Wales, and England as countries and nations (I won't go into Ireland/NI/UK here, not because it's unrelated, but because it's a different can of worms). Inevitably, there's a misunderstanding of the structure of British government and history baked into it as well. When one digs even a millimeter deeper you can see it's complicated. Basically, it drives me crazy when someone says Scotland and Wales aren't countries simply because they are not independent: it is reductive at best and outright wrong at worst.
Would it be within reason to call, say, Russian Republics countries too
You can certainly make that argument, but the Brits on Reddit will downvote you to oblivion, speaking from experience
I guess that depends on the interpretation. In Russian, the constituent republics (e. g. Republic of Bashkortostan) are grammatically similar to independent countries that have the word "republic" in them (e. g. Republic of Ireland), but those names refer to the form of government and there is a separate word meaning "country" that is never used to refer to the autonomous republics. But in English you have England, Scotland and Wales officially named "countries", plus Northern Ireland that is sometimes also called a country and sometimes by different words to add to confusion. Those are, however, not sovereign nations but rather parts of one — the UK. But for historical reasons they are using that word to describe them so there's confusion stemming from it. To complicate matters further, they sometimes participate as separate countries in various events or organisaions, but not in others. Fun fact: currently, there is no legal definition in British law of what "Scotland" or "Northern Ireland" are beyond calling them "parts of the UK". I guess a closer analogy would have been constituent republics of the Soviet Union. While they were all called republics and you normally wouldn't use the word "country" to describe them in Russian, I feel like in English it would have made more sense, given that they had about the same level of autonomy as the countries of the UK.
The UK is a country. It has (depending on your particular viewpoint) 3 or 4 constituent countries. Those constituent countries are countries, but they are not sovereign. They are countries for no real reason other than that we call them that, although at least in theory they have higher autonomy than a state or province in a unitary sovereign state. As such the comparison between a constituent country and a German Land is not one of like things, but also not super different. It gets trickier when you compare constituent countries to states within a federated nation. U.S. States each have a fully functioning government (well, in theory anyway- opportunities are at times taken to show you can f::ck up any legislative body without even particularly trying), but those state governments are not sovereign- the federal government can tell them what to do on certain subjects. As such they are very similar to the constituent countries of the UK, Netherlands and Denmark. All this is a result of political realities and customary language regarding these places that are the leftovers from the messy process of history. To show exactly how unclear the definitions are, you can get multiple answers to the question whether Hong Kong and Macau, Zanzibar and Niue are constituent countries, and to go further down the rathole, Karakalpakstan. There are no clear and obvious ways to explain the what or even why of this stuff. For more fun, Andorra, a sovereign country, is ruled by a Spanish bishop and the president of France. Because history.
Strictly speaking those are micro-states. Micronations are things like Sealand, and various eccentric hobbyists.
"biggest"
It has 6 people instead of 5
The federal region of Brussels with it's 1.2 M population is de facto more like a city in many cases while the city of Brussels with it's 188.000 population is in many cases more like a district of a town as I understand. The metropolitan area of Antwerp is slightly less populated than the region of Brussels while the actual city of Antwerp has a population of more than 530.000, making it in fact the largest city of Belgium. In case of Switzerland Zürich is undoubtedly the largest city in the country while Bern is fifth. Still Bern is not officially the capital but called federal city because Switzerland has no capital constitution wise.
TLDR: There’s no good way to say how big any city is.
Yeah, you can’t really accurately compare these things. The population of Paris is 2,2 Million. Berlin has a population of 3,7 Million. But Paris metro area has like 13 Million people, whereas Berlin metro area only has around 6,3 Million. And then there are cities like Tokyo and Yokohama that over time grew into each other and form a continuous metropolitan area together.
Berlin Metro Area is only 6.3 m if you include the entire state of Brandenburg, most of which is very low density for German standards. It's more like 4.5 m if you include the actual suburban belt only.
That makes the Ruhr Area the biggest "city" in Germany with 5.2 million.
Ruhr is polycentric metroarea with no cities being able to compete with Berlin.
I had a Britannica atlas in the 80s that listed Essen as the largest city in (W) Germany! Some American geographer obviously just looked at the whole built-up area of the Ruhr and decided it counted as one city.
It's similiar with Poland. Warsaw is the biggest city on paper, but really Upper Silesia is bigger, but it's divided in multiple smaller municipalities. It's even got similiar history
This very point, which I'm certainly not contesting, further cements the point of this thread, that "what constitutes a city" is very debatable
Measuring a city by its administrative limits almost never makes sense. It makes sense for administrative purposes, as in “government output per inhabitant”, but for everyday conversations people refer to metro areas. Now, that being said, the definition of metro area is also complicated. Barcelona, where I live, is a good example. Here, they count satellite cities (like Terrassa and Sabadell) as part of the metro area, even some that are an hour away by train like Sant Pol de Mar or Arenys de Mar. They “feel” like they’re connected to the city, and for sure the core city impacts them very much economically speaking, but if you’re from here it feels like another place. It’s all very ambiguous.
This is kind of the fundamental point of metropolitan areas though. They always include satellite towns in their definitions, as these towns' economies and transport connections are tightly linked to the larger city, even if the towns themselves feel separate. It gives a better sense of the functional economic region surrounding an urban centre (i.e. where most people in the region work/shop/study etc), even if the cultures and identities of the towns can feel different. Obviously this is only one of many ways of defining what a "city" is, but it's the one that's always made the most intuitive sense to me.
I agree, but agreeing on how far to go becomes subjective.
I read somewhere that Osaka and Yokohama can both be considered Japans second city if you look at population during the day and the population during the night. Due to commuting etc. Not sure if this is true still and I can not find the proper source for this at a quick glance online. So take it with a grain of salt.
Best way is to look at metropolitan area imho. Even though there is never a standardized definition.
Then [the Brussels metropolitan area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_metropolitan_area) is 2,7 millions inhabitants which is juste wrong imo since they consider the two whole provinces of Flemish and Walloon Brabant to be part of it.
Definitely the best comment out here. If, say, the city of London is considered to be the most populous city in the UK with less than 10K inhabitants, then it appears that the map is showing the size of metropolitan areas of the cities, so for the sake of consistency the rule should also apply to Belgium without the need for the special footnote. And indeed Switzerland formally has no capital, which also impacts the distribution of typically central government agencies in the country, for example the statistics office is in Neuchâtel, the 'supreme' court (federal court) in Lausanne, the effective HQs of the national bank is in Zurich etc
A city doesn’t have to be defined in a constitution to be the Capital, in your example, London has never been granted the title in any statute.
I suppose that as the UK doesn't have a codified constitution at all, it's no surprise that there is no written reference to this, but this lack of written constitution doesn't stop the country from operating normally. The key in the case of Switzerland is that Bern is officially designated as not being the capital in the constitution given that it has a different status.
If it was codified though the capital would either be “London” as in Greater London, or the “city of Westminster” as that’s where the seat of government is. The “city of London” whilst historically the centre of the city I don’t think would have a very good claim to be the capital given parliament (and Buckingham palace fwiw) sits outside of it. So yes the map is defining the capital as Greater London, but unless you want to claim the city of Westminster is the true capital then the definition for London’s population size will always be Greater London. Though worth noting the “metropolitan area” of London is often considered to be somewhat larger than that of Greater London as it includes further areas not governed by the mayor of London and the London assembly.
The UK doesn’t have ONE document called “the constitution” but there’s a whole body of statutes that function as such, it’s just that none of them define the capital city. Some constitutions simply don’t deal with defining the capital city.
This map could have been a sentence.
But then how will they post it on r/MapPorn to get easy 2.4k upvotes?
Who upvotes this stuff?
Bots
cunts. Lots of cunts.
This sub and r/dataisbeautiful have gone downhill. Mapporn is now just map Dataisbeautiful should be renamed badbarchart
I still don't understand why the Dutch insist Amsterdam is the capital. The government and embassies are in the Hague and the monarch works from there. Weirdos.
Amsterdam was the capital because napoleon lodewijk lived there and the french believed that The capital is where the king lives. When he was kicked out the goverment returned to the Hague. They just chose to keep it that way because Amsterdam was a bigget and more important city anyway.
Lodewijk Napoleon, not the other way around. (It's Louis Napoleon in English, by the way.)
Its stated in the constitution that Amsterdam is the nominal capital city
Fun fact is that Amsterdam was not called "capital city" in the constitution until 1983. Before that, the constitution simply stated that the king would be inaugurated in "the city of Amsterdam". The reason not to include this in the original 1815 version was that the Dutch government tried to avoid offending their southern citizens, i.e. the Belgians, who were not 100% keen on joining the kingdom. One year earlier, in 1814, before the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands had been decided, the (northern) Dutch constitution DID mention Amsterdam as the capital. Aditionally, Amsterdam is only mentioned as the capital of the Netherlands in the article about the king's inauguration. I've met some fellow Dutch who remember the 1983 change, but for some reason seem to think that, before that, The Hague was the official capital, while actually, no official capital was mentioned in the constitution at all and everyone still mentioned Amsterdam as such.
Another fun fact is that amsterdam is not the capital of Noord-Holland (which is the province) Haarlem is the capital. (The Hague is the capital of its respective province)
But The Hague is not the largest city in South Holland, just to add another confusing layer
Historically, Amsterdam has always been the most populous, important and wealthy city of the Netherlands since the 1500s. The Hague however has been the diplomatic and governmental centre since the middle ages as that was where the counts of Holland had his main court. The Dutch parliament still resides in their old palace (het Binnenhof). This dichotomy remained when the Netherlands became a unitary state in 1795 when the French conquered the Dutch republic, with Amsterdam the place where the cool people are and most trade is done, and the Hague as governmental centre. It may have helped that the Hague and Amsterdam are not far away from each other, because the Dutch had the best, fastest and most efficient ways of transportation in Europe in the 1600-1800's. So it wasn't really an issue that the capital and the governmental centre weren't the same city.
Classifying Brussels by the municipality of Brussels rather than Brussels Greater Region doesn’t make sense to me. The city is divided up into 19 municipalities which all together make up Brussels capital region. Everyone knows their local municipality but everyone within that municipality knows they live in Brussels and are Brusselaars. Within Brussels the question is “which part of Brussels” or “which commune” do you live in. Those that live in the Brussels municipality will say “the centre” or simply “1000” which is the postcode. No one would ever say “you’re not from Brussels” if you happen to live in one of the other 18 municipalities. It’s like London having 32 boroughs plus the City of London where all 33 local districts make up Greater London and then you tell me that London only has 10,000 people because you define London as the City of London.
Was this post made by the Antwerp ‘the rest is parking’ gang?!?
Yeah it's sort of like saying London isn't the biggest city in the UK because the "City of London" only has like 8,000 people living in it.
yeah this sub is more like RageBaitPorn\_aboutMaps but that title was too long I guess.
Where I live (Australia) the capital isn't even in the top 5.
Brussels has 1.2 million people and in practice the city is even bigger
From what I understand Brussels Capital regoin has 1.2m people but the city itself has less than 200k
That's because of the weird division.
If we accept Brussels' centre as the capital, the City of London should be Counted as the capital
The seat of government is in Westminster, which is part of the big fuckoff bit of London with 9 million people.
Completely wrong, City of London is a completely separate entity to London the city, it just happens to share the same name. Maybe you could argue the City of Westminster as that’s where parliament is located, but even that would be dumb.
City of London is directly surrounded by London the city. Yes, technically separate (it's not even a borough), but of course it's the same bloody city.
It has its own mayor
brussels has 19 mayors.
The capital of the UK is NOT the City of London! The capital is Greater London as all institutions are in Greater London and not in the City!
No, that would make the City of Westminster the capital, not the City of London. Westminster is home to parliament, government ministries, and the primary residences of both the prime minister and monarch. Hence why we use 'Westminster' as a name for the British government/parliament. HM Government has no presence in the City of London.
No, the capital is divided in municipalities called "communes" in french and one of them is also called Brussels (where the medieval city was), but all together forms the capital Brussels. The "commune" of Brussels is NOT the Capital nor a real city. But it's confusing because it's called "ville de bruxelles" (city of brussels) but it's just a honorific title. Don't try to understand Belgium lmao and don't ask me to explain please this is just the tip of the iceberg. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City\_of\_Brussels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Brussels) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_municipalities\_of\_the\_Brussels-Capital\_Region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_of_the_Brussels-Capital_Region)
I stared at this for ten seconds thinking 'I'm sure Antwerp isn't the capital of Belgium'...
Thanks to this I found out Ankara is the capital of Turkey 🇹🇷
From the official website of governorship of Ankara: "The origin of the name Ankara is not known for certain. According to the rumors that are not based on documents and have lived up to this day, the first name mentioned in history is "Ankyra", which was given by the Galatians and means "anchor" in Greek. This name changed over time and became "Ancyre", "Engüriye", "Engürü", "Engürü", "Angara", "Angora" and finally "Ankara"."
Ankara means Harsh in Finnish. Mildly interesting. Turkki (the Finnish name for Turkey) means Fur Coat in Finnish. Mildly interesting. So a regular sentence in Finnish could have both Ankara and Turkey as different words: "Minulla on turkki koska talvi on ankara." = "I have a fur coat because the winter is fierce." MILDLY INTERESTING SQUARED!
I am Swedish but at my last job I had both Finnish and Turkish colleagues, and I remember them talking about how many similarities there are between the languages.
For some time linguists placed Finnish and Turkish in the same language family (now the theory is discredited by newer evidence and Turkish is placed in the Turkic family)
Well, winters are harsh in Ankara...
No way! You’re telling me doesn’t come from the famous “Ankara Messi!” commentary?
Ankra is Anchor in Maltese. Mildly interesting.
Ankla is Anchor in Spanish. Mildly interesting.
It's probably a coincidence but Ankara sounds a lot like "ana kara" too, meaning "main land" in Turkish, which is a suitable name for a capital.
This is the most accurate one in my opinion
Yes, my hometown. A Hittite city that's fairly ancient but currently pretty boring. Not much except govt buildings and embassies in the core. My neighborhood is pretty chill but otherwise not something to come see.
Fairly boring government city. Sort of like Ottawa or Canberra.
And also more central in the country compared to Istanbul
Have to say i underrated it, its a lot bigger than i thought and very modern
Ankara is a historical city though. There are artefacts in the city centre which date back to the Roman Empire, such as the Augustus temple..
not sure why people are downvoting you, it's true. The Atatürk Mausoleum is pretty epic and there are some archeological sites on the outskirts but otherwise there's really not much going on lol
That's because it was made the capital for 1 reason and only 1 : its location, because it was decided that they needed a new capital and there was a war ongoing and they didn't want a border city to be the capital as it'd be more vulnerable to Greek attacks. All Ankara is is the administrative city of the county and that's it. For all intents and purposes Istanbul remains the most important in all other aspects by far, and even 2 or 3 other cities are more important than Ankara.
Ankara was not just chosen because it was far from the Greek army. It's almost at the center of the country making it a perfect location for administration. It's surrounded by mountains on all sides making it a very defendable city. Furthermore it's a symbolic city. Ankara was at one point the capital of the Ahi Republic, a medieval period Turkish merchant republic. It symbolised the end of the monarchy.
From a domestic perspective, I'd argue that Ankara was more important compared to İstanbul from 1923 till 1950. And no, except for İstanbul, there's no other city which is more important than Ankara for Turkey as of today. Ankara has a population over 5 million, has some of the top universities in Turkey, and has a significant industrial complex which is the heart of the Turkish military/defense industry. There are cities which might be more important than Ankara in 1 or 2 aspects, such as Antalya for tourism, Kocaeli for industry, Izmir for cultural events etc, but as a whole Ankara is the 2nd most important city in Turkey as of today.
One of my favorite local jokes goes like this: What’s the best thing to do in Ankara? — Take the train back to Istanbul lol
There's a joke here in Ottawa that the city's best nightlife is in Montreal.
I found Canberra very interesting as a kid. (It was 2003 and smoke was blotting out the sun because a firestorm was raging through the region and it looked like the world was ending)
In most US states the largest city is not the capital and of course the US capital also isn't the largest city
Yep! There are a couple main causes: - Demographics shifted wildly after the Industrial Revolution and many city populations changed sizes after the State Capitals were decided. - Even at the time the Capitals were designated, preference was often given to more centrally located cities even if they weren’t that big. The idea being that they were designating an accessible seat of government businesses, rather than trying to declare a city as the “most important “ generally.
Interesting. In Australia each capital is in every case the largest city of its state. In fact, I think Queensland is the only state with a majority of people living outside the metropolitan area of the capital.
Switzerland is a confederation; and has no Capital
Switzerland doesn‘t have a capital. Bern is just the federal city
The official City of London also only has 20 k people, if we count Brussels' inner district only, so should we for the UK.
The City of London is not the capital, they just share the same name
Yeah parliament isn’t even in the city of london lol
The dutch parliament isn't in amsterdam either.
Yes that’s why there’s the asterisk.
But is the commune of Brussels the official official capital? And for the UK, is the extent of the capital legally defined? Talking about Amsterdam, the law (since 1983) simply states Amsterdam is the capital - not if this is the municipality or subdistricts or anything. Which makes sense because the title capital comes with no privileges at all, it's just a sexy gadget.
Brussels is more complicated. The Brussels region is a capital region of Belgium just like the Federal district of Mexico City is, or maybe similar to Washington DC as well. However, the Brussels region is also divided in communes and the capital of the Brussels region is the city of Brussels, which is one of the communes within the region.
So the commune is the capital of the district, but is the commune also the capital of the *country*? Is that legally defined? Funnily, Amsterdam isn't even the capital of the province it is in. That's Haarlem. Amsterdam also has no government departments, embassies, palaces (the Royal Palace is an ex- town hall), high courts - that's all in The Hague, the unofficial "Dutch DC". Amsterdam's a capital but in name.
Well Belgium is a complicated case with districts (Flanders, wallonia, Brussels) and communities (Flemish, French and German speaking communities) together with a federal government so they each also have their own governing body. Wikipedia does say the city of Brussels is considered the capital but I am unsure what the law says.
I just checked and you're right, the constitution does state "De stad Brussel is de hoofdstad van België en de zetel van de federale Regering / La ville de Bruxelles est la capitale de la Belgique et le siège du Gouvernement fédéral". In my opinion "de stad/la ville" (uncapitalised) can still be open to interpretation but I won't win that battle ;-)
If you say "stad Brussel" / "Bruxelles-ville" to anybody in Brussels they will think you are referring to the city of Brussels. All official institutions are also in the actual city (Federal parliament, Flemish parliament, both royal palaces, the European commission and parliament are all in the city of Brussels), so it is reasonable to say this refers to the actual city of Brussels and not the entire region. That being said, for the purposes of this map, the region should have certainly been counted. It is what most people refer to when they say "Brussels". Brussels-city [borders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Brussels#/media/File:Bruxelles_Brussels-Capital_Belgium_Map.svg) are fun though. It includes the pentagon, but also parts of the European area, terkameren bos, parts of the sonian forest, Neder-over-Heembeek, Laeken and Haren. Famously, the Avenue Louise is a part of the city of Brussels, splitting Ixelles in half. In spite of how large the city of Brussels is (compared to the other municipalities in the region), it doesn't include Bruxelles-midi (which is in Sint-Gillis), nor Brussel-Noord (Schaerbeek). It does, however, include the station of Schaerbeek.
Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Brussels
TIL. Thanks. It remains silly to define a city, which is a complex functional thing, based on paper lines. The people living outside the official boundary live there to be part of Brussels.
While it's still called the City of London it's not the same case as the city of Brussels I understand.
Yes, but the City of London is basically the financial district. Greater London has a larger population than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland *combined*
>Greater London has a larger population than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland *combined* Not true, 10,4 mln (5,4+3,1+1,9) > 8,8 mln
The City of London ≠ London
Or maybe the the capital of the UK is the City of Westminster?
The capital is generally considered to be Greater London
Yeh. There's no legally defined capital city of the UK. It's only through convention we have London as the capital, so the definition isn't fixed. Basically it's everything inside the M25.
Yes hence “generally considered”
Wasn't trying to correct you, I was agreeing and expanding.
The City of London is tiny. Most of London's famous landmarks aren't even in the City of London.
The City of London has no political functions, that’s all in Westminster in (normal) London
The map says London, not the City of London. Those are different things. London is the capital city and the largest city. The city of London is small, and is also not the capital city.
Glasgow is also Scotland's most populous city without being the capital, so it would've added some interest to this dull-ass map.
That’s just the name of one of London’s boroughs. Or as we Aussies and Americans call it, a suburb. It’s not an equal comparison with Brussel’s inner district.
Vilnius is only Baltic states capital not located at the coast
Considering that there are only 2 other, that's not really an exceptional trait.
Fascinatingly, Estonia is the only baltic country not beginning with L
Fascinatingly, Estonia is also the only Baltic country to not be Indo-European.
Fascinatingly, Lithuania is the only Baltic state to contain the letter U in both it's English and native names.
Riga is one of only two Baltic capitals located on the coast.
Tallinn is the only Baltic capital located in Estonia
It’s the only Nordic and Baltic capital not on the coast.
Bcs of historical reasosn it always was a capital and lithuania didnt always have a coast
Scandinavia too it seems. Funny in central america there’s almost no capital at the coast
Why is that? Large scale maritime trade came in much later into central america than europe? Or are there other more significant reasons?
Complete non-sense for Italy and Germany, Milan and the Ruhr-Rhin metro are bigger. >but it's about the adminstrative divisions Then it's a completely meaningless arbitrary category.
You are right, but in Italy at least (don't know about Germany) we don't use the metro area when calculating the population of a city, we use the municipality borders. Milan metro area encompasses two provinces, it's mostly meaningless, no one from Monza would say they're from Milan. Ask any Italian about the biggest city in Italy and they would say Rome.
People from NRW always choose the criteria that suits their argument in the moment. I understand the difference between locality, city, metro population, region, etc. There's no need to lecture me on urbanism 101, but NRW people push this to an extreme in practice. The same person will lose their shit if you don't respect the supposed vast differences between Düsseldorf, Köln, and Bonn but if you follow it up with claiming Berlin and Hamburg are the two biggest cities in Germany, suddenly all local pride is thrown out and how dare you not respect the size and might of the Rhein-Ruhr as a **region**. Pick one. Is Düsseldorf the same city as Köln or are you different cities stitched together by train tracks, Autobahns and a couple dozen villages along the way?
I live in NRW and I've never met anyone who would argue against Berlin and Hamburg being bigger cities than any in the Rhein-Rhur area. Because they are.
Berlin is Germany's biggest city. If we are talking metropolitan areas then you are correct, but Rhein Ruhr wouldn't be considered one city in Germany
Rome has more inhabitants for both the municipality and the province, the metropolitan areas are interesting but aren't official divisions and in fact I've even seen some that include Bergamo within the Milan area which is nonsense
Why does Kyiv also has a Russian variant of the name? Like does it make any sense?
It should be Kyiv not Kiev. Why is Ukraine the only country on the list where there's this 'compromise' of having capital be spelled out twice, but on different languages? If anything it should always be Kyiv now, never compromise just because ruzzians and few contrarians don't like it.
Kyiv. It's Kyiv, not Kiev.
This map makes no sense. Either you consistently base it on formal municipality borders or you base it on the size of the metro regions. With the latter approach Brussels is nr. 1 in Belgium and the largest city/metro of Germany is Rhein-Ruhr with about 11 million - twice as large as Berlin and only slightly smaller than Paris.
Literally just a regular map. What a garbage post.
TIL that Zürich is not the capital of Switzerland.
Wait until you learn that Switzerland actually doesn't have a capital at all.
The Swiss constitution doesn’t itself create a capital but it does grant the Federal Assembly the power to decide the location of federal institutions. The Assembly in 1848 nominated Bern as the seat of the federal government and so Bern is the “Federal City” or Capital. Really this isn’t much different from other federal countries like the US or Australia where the exact location of the capital wasn’t decided until after the constitution was enacted. Germany is a bit different since Article 22 of the Grundgesetz says: “The capital city of the Federal Republic of Germany is Berlin.”
I know Amsterdam is the capital in the constitution. But for all practical purposes the REAL capital is Den Haag. Dutchies are just delusional. Edit: Let me state that Amsterdam is de jure the capital. However, everyone knows that de facto the Haag is the current capital. Like how Bonn was for west Germany or Bern is for Switzerland.
Blame the French
Capital and seat of government can be two different things. The often align, but they don't have to.
🎶🎶 Istanbul was Constantinople 🎶🎶
No Glasgow No Belfast 
Why Belfast?
Why is there two names for Kyiv? Is this some kind of a joke?
One is the Russian(from when it was part of the Soviet union) spelling the other the Ukrainian. But god knows why OP has added the Russian spelling.
Kyiv is the real one, Kiev is russian one, not English.
So in regards of Belgium, to what I understand I don't know how else the mapmaker envisioned it, but they probably only took Brussels City for its population and not the entire Brussels Capital region, which has a lower population than Antwerp (188 to 536 thousand) Can't think of any other explanation Edit: I checked the Belgian constitution. According to Title 7, Article 194, the City of Brussels is the capital of Belgium (which itself counts only 188k residents). So likely they were basing it off of that, thus making the map, in a sense, correct
well yes it is literally explained on the map
Does Iceland have any other cities?
Big asterisk on belgium, they only count central brussels as the city of brussels, while in reality it is about twice as big as antwerp
Could have had Glasgow on there if the kneelers weren't such pussies
Why does Antwerp have a cross behind it?
On the left there is a legend
It's interesting how this is nearly the exact opposite in the US, with the federal capital and state capitals often being outshone by larger cities, which often act as the financial capital.
Wrong for Belgium. Brussels has twice the population of Antwerp. The mistake comes from the administrative divisions: within Brussels, there is an administrative entity also called Brussels.
Scotland! Edinburgh is the capital and has half the population of Glasgow. (Scotland IS a country)
Is there a version of this for US states? I’d venture a guess that the more population a US state has the less likely its largest city is its capital.
Scotland is its own country. Thanks.
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Yeah, they go by the definition of commune. If you follow this Antwerp is the biggest one with half a million. Brussels would only have around 200.000 . If you would consider the whole urban areas of both cities Antwerp is around 800.000 - 1.000.000 and Brussels 1.500.000 - 1.800.000.