Belgrade | |
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State | Central Serbia |
Country | Serbia |
Capital | |
Population | 1166763 |
Postcode | 11000 |
Belgrade ( BEL-grayd; Serbian: Београд, romanized: Beograd, lit. 'White City', pronounced [beǒɡrad] (listen); names in other languages) is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It's located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers as well as the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. Nearly 1.7 million people live within the administrative limits of the Town of Belgrade, a quarter of the total population of Serbia.Belgrade is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe and the World. One of the most important prehistoric cultures of Europe, the Vinča culture, evolved within the Belgrade area in the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, Thraco-Dacians inhabited the region and, after 279 BC, Celts settled the town, naming it Singidūn. It was conquered by the Romans under the reign of Augustus and given Roman town rights in the mid-2nd century. It had been settled by the Slavs in the 520s, and changed hands several times between the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary before it became the seat of the Serbian king Stefan Dragutin in 1284. Belgrade served as capital of the Serbian Despotate during the reign of Stefan Lazarević, and then his successor Đurađ Branković returned into the Hungarian king in 1427. Noon bells in support of the Hungarian army against the Ottoman Empire during the siege in 1456 have remained a widespread church heritage to this day. In 1521, Belgrade was conquered by the Ottomans and became the chair of the Sanjak of Smederevo. It often passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Austro-Ottoman wars.
Sacramento | |
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State | |
Country | |
Capital | |
Population | 490712 |
Sacramento ( SAK-rə-MEN-toh; Spanish: [sakɾaˈmento], Spanish for ''sacrament'') is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat and largest city of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's estimated 2019 population of 513,625 makes it the sixth-largest city in California and the ninth-largest capital in the United States. Sacramento is the seat of the California Legislature and the Governor of California, making it the state's political center and a hub for lobbying and think tanks. Sacramento is also the cultural and economic core of the Sacramento metropolitan area, which at the 2010 census had a population of 2,414,783, making it the fifth-largest in California.Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area was inhabited by the Nisenan, Maidu and other indigenous peoples of California. Spanish cavalryman Gabriel Moraga surveyed and named the Rio del Santísimo Sacramento (Sacramento River) in 1808, after the Blessed Sacrament, referring to the Eucharist in the Catholic Church. In 1839, Juan Bautista Alvarado, Mexican governor of Alta California, granted the responsibility of colonizing the Sacramento Valley to Swiss-born Mexican citizen John Augustus Sutter, who subsequently established Sutter's Fort and the settlement at the Rancho Nueva Helvetia.