Cities That Used to Be Capitals

When a capital moves, the former capital almost always remains the largest and best-known city in the country, which is exactly why people give it as the answer. Learn the moves and the traps disappear.

Moves in the 20th and 21st centuries

• Brazil — Rio de Janeiro to Brasília (1960). Rio had been the capital since 1763.
• Nigeria — Lagos to Abuja (1991). Abuja was built from scratch in the geographic centre of the country.
• Kazakhstan — Almaty to Astana (1997). The new capital was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 and back to Astana in 2022.
• Myanmar — Yangon (Rangoon) to Naypyidaw (2005), announced with only days' notice.
• Pakistan — Karachi to Islamabad (capital functions moved through the 1960s; Rawalpindi served as interim capital during construction).
• Tanzania — Dar es Salaam to Dodoma (declared 1974, effective 1996, government substantially relocated in the 2010s).
• Côte d'Ivoire — Abidjan to Yamoussoukro (1983).
• Germany — Bonn to Berlin (Berlin named capital on reunification in 1990; the government and parliament finished moving in 1999).
• Palau — Koror to Ngerulmud (2006), one of the least populous capitals in the world.
• Malawi — Zomba to Lilongwe (1975).
• Belize — Belize City to Belmopan (1970, after Belize City was devastated by Hurricane Hattie).
• Nauru — never formally had a capital; Yaren has always been the de facto seat.

Older changes worth knowing

• Japan — Kyoto was the imperial capital for over a thousand years until the emperor moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo ("eastern capital"), in 1868.
• Russia — Moscow was the capital until 1712, then St Petersburg until 1918, then Moscow again after the revolution.
• Turkey — Constantinople (Istanbul) was an imperial capital for about 1,600 years, first of the Eastern Roman Empire and then the Ottoman, until Ankara in 1923.
• Italy — as unification advanced, the capital of the new kingdom moved from Turin (1861) to Florence (1865) to Rome (1871).
• United States — the Continental and Confederation Congresses met in Philadelphia, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton and New York before Washington, D.C. opened in 1800.
• Poland — Kraków was the royal capital until the court moved to Warsaw around 1596.
• Australia — Melbourne was the interim seat of the federal government from 1901 until Canberra was ready in 1927.

Why capitals move

The reasons echo those for choosing a small capital in the first place: to relieve a congested or vulnerable primary city, to develop a neglected region, to assert a break with a colonial or imperial past, or to build a purpose-designed seat of government that the state can fully control. A few moves are forced — Belize relocated after a hurricane; wartime and revolution shifted Russia's capital twice in six years.