Which Bolivian city is the seat of government and home to the legislature?

La Paz houses the presidency and the legislature even though the constitution names Sucre as capital, an arrangement dating from the conflict of the late nineteenth century that shifted power toward the tin-mining and trading interests of the west. The city's setting is extraordinary: it lies in a deep canyon cut into the altiplano, so the streets fall steeply from the rim to the valley floor, with a difference in altitude of several hundred metres between neighbourhoods and a corresponding difference in climate. The Spanish founded the settlement in that hollow precisely because the exposed plain above is punishingly cold and windy. Sitting so high has practical effects on everything from cooking times to visiting athletes' lungs, and the gradients are steep enough that the city turned to aerial cable cars to link the canyon with the sprawling city of El Alto on the plateau above.

El Alto, on the plateau directly above La Paz, is now a large city in its own right and holds the international airport.