Germany is subdivided politically into sixteen states. For two of these states—Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate—there is something which always struck me as an interesting geographical oddity. Namely, their respective capital cities of Weisbaden and Mainz border each other. You can drive between the two state legislatures in about ten minutes.
I was wondering if there are any other examples of two national or two subnational capitals directly bordering each other.
The only cases I can think of are Berlin/Potsdam and Vatican City/Rome, though these arguably don’t count, since the first city in each pairing is actually a city-state. (That is, you wouldn’t normally say that Berlin is the capital of Berlin, nor that the Vatican is the capital of the Vatican.)
Can anyone think of any further unequivocal examples?
Link to a sporcle-quiz with a similar topic
It seems there are no more country capitals that are closer than the ones already mentioned. So we can concentrate on regional capitals like your first example.
I actually came here to answer Wiesbaden and Mainz, when I read the name of the topic on the forum main page.
There Buenos Aries and Montevideo, which are about 100 miles apart but sort of border each other by virtue of being right across the Rio de la Plata from each other.
Technically (or rather, historically), Budapest. It’s been the capital of Hungary since the 14th century, but Buda and Pest were only officially merged in the 19th.
I don’t think so. Pest didn’t become the capital of Hungary until 1848; I don’t think it was a seat of government before then. Likewise I’m not aware of Buda being a regional capital before its consolidation with Pest in 1873.
Bratislava and Vienna are the closest in Europe, only about 35 miles along the Danube.
Although that Sporcle quiz suggests that Rome and the Vatican City are 4.70km apart. Rather dubious, considering Rome encircles the Vatican. I’m not sure I’d count the Vatican as a capital city, either. It’s a city state, like Singapore, with no real capital.
Well, Hungary has a complicated history with capitals. 1256 or 1361? All my books are packed away for a move, but I’ll see if I can resolve the discrepancy at some point - now I’m curious.
I’m not seeing any contradiction between what I wrote and what you found on Wikipedia—I said Buda wasn’t a regional (i.e., subnational) capital, and your quote says only it was the national capital. In any case, my point is that there doesn’t appear to any time in history during which Buda and Pest were both separate cities and national or subnational capitals. But if someone knows otherwise I’m happy to be corrected.
In the USA, Providence and Boston would be the closest, with Boston being very close to Concord as well, and Providence also being very close to Hartford.
Phoenix appears to be the state capital most distant from another the capital of another state (excluding Alaska and Hawai’i, the freak states).
Yeah, I can’t seem to find anything saying even that Buda was in one subnational state and Pest in another. All the maps I’ve been able to find so far seem to have Buda and Pest squarely in one political region of Hungary, and I can’t find anything saying where one may have been the regional (county/state) capital and the other being the national capital.
Bratislava and Vienna would have been my prime examples for Europe. Globally speaking, pairs of capitals which face each other on opposing sides of a body of water would be Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and Buenos Aires and Montevideo, both already mentioned by other dopers.
The case of Rome and the Vatican is interesting in another aspect: It makes Rome the city in the world with the largest number of embassies, since many countries operate separate embassies to Italy and the Holy See, with the Holy See embassy usually being located on Italian territory for practical reasons. There even is an Italian embassy in Rome. Oh, and Rome is also the seat of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an ancient non-state entity which is recognised as a subject of international law and maintains diplomatic relations with a lot of countries, but states typically do not maintain a separate embassy in Rome to the Order of Malta.
An even odder constellation arises when the same city serves as the capital of more than one entity. Jerusalem has already been mentioned, but it is not a good example since there is not much actual Palestinian administration going on there, with the actual centre of the Palestinian Authority being Ramallah. It’s more of a de jure claim. In addition, most governments worldwide do not recognise the Israeli claim of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and maintain, for that reason, their embassies to Israel in Tel Aviv.
The situation truly arises, at a subnational level, in the Indian city of Chandigarh: It is simultaneously the capital of two states of India and of a federally administered district (analogous to the District of Columbia in the U.S.) which consists of the city itself, making it in essence the capital of three state-level administrative units in India.
Oh, and one more thing about Vienna: It is a state in its own right under the Austrian constitution, and it thus serves as the capital of itself. Until 1986, it was also the capital of the Austrian state of Lower Austria, which surrounds Vienna and thus had a state government located outside the boundaries of the state itself. The state capital of Lower Austria has, however, since been moved to the city of Sankt Pölten, which is located within the state.
Even at that, the Quirinal palace is only 2.8 km from St. Peter’s, and the Senate building and Chamber of Deputies are even closer. Even the Palatine Hill is only 2.5 km away.