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Asian Capitals Quiz

Forty-five Asian capitals on a flat map: read the city on each card and click its country. From Ankara to Tokyo, three tries each.

Built to order: the purpose-made capitals of Asia

Three capitals on this map were built from nothing to replace a bigger city. Pakistan moved its government from Karachi to Islamabad, a planned city in the north laid out in the 1960s. Kazakhstan moved from Almaty to the steppe town of Akmola in 1997 and renamed it Astana, which simply means capital, the following year; after three years as Nur-Sultan it went back to Astana in 2022. Myanmar moved from Yangon to Naypyidaw in 2005, a city of enormous empty boulevards in the interior that most visitors never see. New Delhi belongs half in this group: the British built it beside the old city to replace Calcutta as the capital of India and inaugurated it in 1931. Indonesia has passed a law to move from Jakarta to Nusantara on Borneo, but the transfer has been slow and the card still says Jakarta.

Not the biggest city

The largest city is the wrong answer more often here than on any other map. Ankara, not Istanbul: Ataturk made a provincial town in the Anatolian interior the capital of the republic in 1923. Hanoi, not Ho Chi Minh City; Abu Dhabi, not Dubai; Beijing, not Shanghai; Islamabad, not Karachi; Astana, not Almaty; Naypyidaw, not Yangon. Manila is the capital of the Philippines, but Quezon City next door has more people and held the title itself from 1948 to 1976. Sri Lanka's card reads Colombo, the commercial capital where most ministries sit; parliament moved in the 1980s to Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, a suburb on Colombo's edge that is the official capital. Two countries split the job without moving the title: Malaysia's federal government works from Putrajaya while Kuala Lumpur remains the capital, and most of South Korea's ministries have moved to Sejong while Seoul, whose name simply means capital, keeps it.

Names that explain themselves

Several of the cards are descriptions. Beijing is the northern capital and Tokyo the eastern one; the emperor moved there from Kyoto in 1868 and the old name, Edo, went with the shogunate. Dushanbe is Tajik for Monday, after the market day of the village it grew from; Bishkek was Frunze until 1991; Tashkent is the stone city, Kuala Lumpur the muddy confluence, and Ulan Bator, Ulaanbaatar in Mongolian, the red hero, a city that holds around half of Mongolia's population. Bandar Seri Begawan, the longest name on the map, was Brunei Town until 1970, when it was renamed in honour of the sultan's father.

Oldest, highest, lowest

Damascus, Sana'a and Yerevan each have a claim to be among the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth: Yerevan traces its founding to the Urartian fortress of Erebuni in the eighth century BC, and Sana'a's old city of tower houses is a World Heritage site, though since the civil war the internationally recognised government has sat in Aden. Baghdad was founded in 762 as a round city by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. Baku, on the shore of the Caspian, is the lowest-lying national capital in the world, about twenty-eight metres below sea level. Thimphu sits above two thousand metres and is famous for having no traffic lights, and Male fills its whole island so completely that the airport had to be built on the next one.

All 45 capitals and their countries

45 capitals are in the deck, listed in alphabetical order by city, each with its country. Israel, Palestine and Singapore are on the map but not in the deck.

1. Abu DhabiUnited Arab Emirates
2. AmmanJordan
3. AnkaraTurkey
4. AshgabatTurkmenistan
5. AstanaKazakhstan
6. BaghdadIraq
7. BakuAzerbaijan
8. Bandar Seri BegawanBrunei
9. BangkokThailand
10. BeijingChina
11. BeirutLebanon
12. BishkekKyrgyzstan
13. ColomboSri Lanka
14. DamascusSyria
15. DhakaBangladesh
16. DiliTimor-Leste
17. DohaQatar
18. DushanbeTajikistan
19. HanoiVietnam
20. IslamabadPakistan
21. JakartaIndonesia
22. KabulAfghanistan
23. KathmanduNepal
24. Kuala LumpurMalaysia
25. Kuwait CityKuwait
26. MaléMaldives
27. ManamaBahrain
28. ManilaPhilippines
29. MuscatOman
30. NaypyidawMyanmar
31. New DelhiIndia
32. Phnom PenhCambodia
33. PyongyangNorth Korea
34. RiyadhSaudi Arabia
35. Sana'aYemen
36. SeoulSouth Korea
37. TaipeiTaiwan
38. TashkentUzbekistan
39. TbilisiGeorgia
40. TehranIran
41. ThimphuBhutan
42. TokyoJapan
43. Ulan BatorMongolia
44. VientianeLaos
45. YerevanArmenia

Questions about the capitals

Why are Singapore, Israel and Palestine left out of the capitals round?

Singapore is a city-state whose capital has the same name as the country, so a card would give the answer away. Israel and Palestine both claim Jerusalem, and its status as a capital is disputed, so neither gets a capital card; all three stay on the map under their flags.

Which Asian capitals are not the largest city of their country?

More than a dozen. Ankara (Istanbul is larger), Beijing (Shanghai), Hanoi (Ho Chi Minh City), Abu Dhabi (Dubai), Islamabad (Karachi), Astana (Almaty), Naypyidaw (Yangon), New Delhi (Mumbai), Manila (Quezon City) and Colombo, whose official successor, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is smaller still. Most of the rest, from Tokyo and Seoul to Tehran and Baghdad, are the biggest city as well.

Is it Astana or Nur-Sultan?

Astana. Kazakhstan's capital was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 after the departing president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and renamed back to Astana in 2022. Before 1998 it was Akmola, and before that Tselinograd; the government moved there from Almaty in 1997. Almaty remains the largest city and the commercial centre.

More maps

Flags of the same map: Asia. Other maps: US state capitals, European capitals, Capitals of the Americas, African capitals, French regional capitals, Spanish regional capitals, Italian regional capitals, Brazilian state capitals, German state capitals, Canadian provincial capitals. All 235 flags of the world with their capitals: Flags of the world · all modes.