Gunungsitoli

Gunungsitoli is a city in North Sumatra province, Indonesia, on the north-eastern side of Nias, an island in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra. It is the only city on the island and the hub for Nias and the smaller islands around it. The city grew from a series of fortifications built by the Dutch colonial administration in the 1600s, and until 1914 it was the only part of the island the Dutch effectively controlled. It counted 126,202 residents in 2010 and 136,017 in 2020, and had about 145,000 in mid 2024, making it the seventh most populous city in the province. It was separated from Nias Regency on 29 October 2008. The climate is tropical rainforest, and because the city lies near the boundary between the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plates it is prone to earthquakes and, being on the coast, to tsunamis; the 2005 Nias-Simeulue earthquake devastated it.