Islamabad

capital city · planned city · Pakistan · mountains

Built brand new. Islamabad was constructed in the 1960s as a completely planned city, meaning architects and engineers designed the whole thing before anyone moved there. It officially became Pakistan's capital in 1967.

Nestled in hills. The city sits along the Margalla Hills in northern Punjab, giving it a spectacular mountainous backdrop that most capital cities don't have.

Took over from Karachi. Before Islamabad, Karachi was Pakistan's capital, but the government decided they wanted a fresh, organized city in a new location, so they built Islamabad from the ground up.

Over a million people. Today, more than 1.1 million people live in Islamabad itself, with millions more in nearby cities like Rawalpindi, creating a huge metropolitan area of over 5.7 million people.