What is the capital of Australia?

Canberra is the capital of Australia and the seat of federal government, home to Parliament House, the High Court, and the national institutions. It is neither the largest nor the best-known Australian city, which is why the question is among the most commonly missed capital questions along with Brazil, Canada, Turkey, and the United States, all of which have capitals that are not their largest cities.

The reason is a compromise. At federation in 1901, Sydney and Melbourne were the two dominant cities and each expected to be the capital. Neither would accept the other, so the constitution specified that the capital would be located in New South Wales but at least 100 miles from Sydney, with Melbourne serving as the temporary seat of government in the meantime. A site was selected in 1908, an international design competition was won by the American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, and construction began in 1913. Parliament did not move there until 1927, and the current Parliament House opened in 1988.

The city is a planned capital in the same category as Washington, Brasilia, and Islamabad, laid out around geometric axes and a artificial lake, and it sits within its own federal district, the Australian Capital Territory, rather than within a state. Its population is a small fraction of Sydney's or Melbourne's. Two adjacent facts worth having: Australia's largest city is Sydney, and its head of state arrangement makes it a constitutional monarchy with a governor-general representing the British monarch, though a 1999 referendum on becoming a republic was defeated.