What is the capital city of Australia?

When the Australian colonies federated in 1901, Sydney and Melbourne both expected to become the seat of the new nation, and neither would concede. The compromise written into the constitution was that the capital would be a brand-new city on land ceded by New South Wales, at least a hundred miles from Sydney, with Melbourne serving as a temporary seat until it was ready. A pastoral valley in the Southern Tablelands was chosen, an international design competition was won by the Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, and their plan of concentric circles and radiating avenues around an artificial lake was laid out from scratch. Parliament finally moved there in 1927. The result is a capital that is deliberately not the country's commercial or cultural hub, which is exactly why the question catches people out: Australia's most photographed city and its capital are two different places, by design.

Canberra sits inside the Australian Capital Territory, a self-governing enclave carved out of New South Wales so that no single state would host the federal government.