10 Countries Where The Capital Isn’t The City That You’d Expect

The third colony of the British Empire to be granted Dominion status after Canada and Australia was New Zealand in 1907 (the fourth was Newfoundland, whose most significant city was actually its capital before the territory was incorporated into Canada in 1949).

Spread out across around 600 islands (with 2 main ones), New Zealand’s capital is Wellington, which is the third city to have held the title during the near 200-year history of the country. The first, Okiato, was replaced by Auckland after just a year in 1841. Since then, Auckland has been the city’s most populous and visited destination, boasting the majority of the country’s significant business and financial institutions.

Wellington was chosen as the new capital in 1865 and has since grown to be a quarter of the size of its predecessor in terms of population, buoyed significantly in recent years by art, tourism and the growth of the New Zealand film industry (which owes an awful lot to native director Peter Jackson and his Lord Of The Rings trilogy).

This decision to change was made out of fear that the South Island, which at the time had a much higher population and wealth as a result of gold rushes, would secede given the vast distance from the city that was governing them (Auckland is located in the north of North Island). Neutral Australian commissioners chose Wellington for its central location, allowing parliamentarians from north and south alike to have comparable travel times by ship.