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Tegucigalpa

Capital of HondurasMountains ring the valley where Tegucigalpa lies, in the southern-central highlands of Honduras. The Choluteca River runs through it, separating it from its twin city, Comayagüela.

Why it's the capital

Spanish settlers founded it as a mining town on 29 September 1578. After 1838 the capital switched back and forth between Tegucigalpa and Comayagua, until President Marco Aurelio Soto moved the seat of government to Tegucigalpa on 30 October 1880.

Fun facts

  1. The name may come from a Nahuatl word meaning "hills of silver", but experts are not sure, since the local people did not know of any mineral deposits there.
  2. Hondurans often shorten the city's name to Tegus.
  3. Saint Michael appears in the city's founding name, Real de Minas de San Miguel de Tegucigalpa, and the cathedral, dating from 1765, is also named after him.

Finding it on the globe

Honduras faces the Caribbean to the north and touches the Pacific at the Gulf of Fonseca to the south. Tegucigalpa is inland in the south-central highlands, closer to that southern gulf.

Sources: Wikipedia: Tegucigalpa, Wikipedia: Honduras