How many meters above sea level do you live? Buckingham Palace sits at only 16 meters (52 feet) above sea level, while Paris sits 50 meters (164 feet) above. By contrast, the top of Japan’s Mount Fuji sits 3,776 meters (12,388 feet) above sea level and is still less high than the highest city of them all. Any guesses?
The highest administrative capital city in the world is La Paz, Bolivia at 3,869 meters (12,693.57 feet) above sea level, yet just across the canyon is El Alto at 4,150 meters (13,615) above sea level. Together these two cities make up the world’s highest metropolis, with more than 2 million people living here. Today La Paz is Bolivia’s administrative capital, while Sucre is the constitutional capital.
La Paz is located inside a geological depression, at the very edge of a valley between the Cordillera Real Mountains and the Bolivian Altiplano. Given the steep hills and elevation across the city, in 2014 a $234 million (£140 million) cable car system was installed, with three lines capable of transporting 18,000 passengers.
Controversially, some dispute La Paz-El Alto’s position, and list La Rinconada in Peru as the highest city on Earth. Sitting 5,100 metres (16,732 feet) above sea level, La Rinconada is a permanent settlement – however, since the population is only around 50,000, technically it is only a town, not a city. It does, however, take the title of highest permanent settlement in the world.
Sneaking into the official second spot is Ecuador’s capital city Quito, at an elevation of 2,784 meters (9,133 feet) above sea level. Interestingly, Quito is also considered to be the closest capital city in the world to the equator.
Previously, according to Guinness World Records, the highest capital in the world was Lhasa, Tibet at an elevation of 3,684 meters (12,087 feet) above sea level, before it became an autonomous region of China.
According to the World Economic Forum, the countries with the most cities at high elevation are China and Mexico, with eight cities apiece.
As for the highest country in the world, there’s only one that lives entirely above 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) in elevation: Lesotho. Known as the “The Kingdom in the Sky,” for obvious reasons, the entire territory of the landlocked kingdom in Southern Africa sits above 1,400 meters (4,593 feet).
