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is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2007 census estimate, the city had a total population of 67,062 making it the fifth-largest city in Iowa. It is the county seat of Johnson County and the home of the University of Iowa. It is located adjacent to Coralville and surrounds University Heights, with which it forms a contiguous urban area. It is the principal city of the Iowa City, Iowa Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses Johnson and Washington counties and has a population of 147,038.
Iowa City was the second capital of the Iowa Territory and the first capital of the State of Iowa. The Old Capitol building is a National Historic Landmark and stands as a tourist attraction in the center of the University of Iowa campus as well as being an integral part of the university's Pentacrest. The University of Iowa Art Museum and Plum Grove, home of the first governor of Iowa, are other tourist attractions. In 2008,
named Iowa City the second Best Small Metropolitan Area for doing business in the United States.
Iowa City was created by an act of Legislative Assembly of the Iowa Territory on January 21, 1839, fulfilling the desire of Governor Robert Lucas to move the capital out of Burlington and closer to the center of the territory. The act began,
Commissioners Chauncey Swan and John Ronalds met on May 1 in the small settlement of Napoleon, south of present-day Iowa City, to select a site for the new capital city. The following day the commissioners selected a site on bluffs above the Iowa River north of Napoleon, placed a stake in the center of the proposed site and began planning the new capital city. Commissioner Swan, in a report to the legislature in Burlington, described the site:
By June of that year, the town had been platted and surveyed from Brown St. in the north to Burlington St. in the south, and from the Iowa River eastward to Governor St.
While Iowa City was selected as the territorial capital in 1839, it did not officially become the capital city until 1841; after construction on the capitol building had begun. The capitol building was completed in 1842, and the last four territorial legislatures and the first six Iowa General Assemblies met there until 1876, when the state capital was moved to Des Moines.