Atlas Trail
Ten Seats of Territories That Are Not Fully Sovereign States
These ten cities govern places whose political status is something other than an ordinary independent state: overseas territories, autonomous and special administrative regions, a constituent country, and two disputed lands. The path runs from Greenland across the Atlantic and Caribbean, then to the Sahara, the West Bank and the Pearl River estuary, so each stop shows a different arrangement of local government and outside authority.
Stop 1 of 10.
Cities
Nuuk is the capital of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, and at about 64 degrees 11 minutes north it is the northernmost capital in the world. Hans Egede founded it in 1728 as Godthaab, and it took back its Greenlandic name when home rule began in 1979. About 20,113 people lived there in January 2025.
Stop 2 of 10.
Cities
Cardiff is the capital of Wales, one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, and the city and county together hold 383,919 people as of 2024. It grew from a small town into a coal-exporting port, became a city in 1905 and was proclaimed capital only in 1955.
Stop 3 of 10.
Cities
Road Town stands on Road Harbour on the south coast of Tortola and is the capital of the British Virgin Islands, a British Overseas Territory. Its name comes from the nautical word for a sheltered anchorage, and about 15,000 people lived there in 2018.
Stop 4 of 10.
Cities
George Town on Grand Cayman is the capital of the Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory, and is named after King George III. It had 47,009 residents in 2025 and is the largest city of any British Overseas Territory by population.
Stop 5 of 10.
Cities
Cockburn Town on Grand Turk is the capital of the Turks and Caicos Islands, another British Overseas Territory. Salt collectors founded it in 1681, and its national museum displays finds from the Molasses Reef wreck, dated to 1505.
Stop 6 of 10.
Cities
Philipsburg is the capital of Sint Maarten, a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, on the southern side of the island of Saint Martin. It was founded around 1733 by the Scotsman John Philips, and it had 1,894 inhabitants in 2017.
Stop 7 of 10.
Cities
Gustavia is the capital of Saint Barthelemy, a French overseas collectivity. It was renamed for King Gustav III of Sweden during the Swedish ownership of the island from 1784 to 1878, and it keeps Swedish-era architecture around its harbor. About 2,300 people live there.
Stop 8 of 10.
Cities
Laayoune, also spelled El Aaiun, is the largest city of the disputed territory of Western Sahara, with 262,791 residents in 2024. Spain founded it in 1938 as a military outpost, and Morocco administers it, while the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic claims it as its capital.
Stop 9 of 10.
Cities
Ramallah in the central West Bank is the administrative capital of Palestine, about 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem and 872 meters above sea level. It hosts the Mukataa presidential compound and the Palestinian Legislative Council, and it had 43,880 residents in 2024.
Stop 10 of 10.
Cities
Macau is a special administrative region of China made up of the Macau Peninsula, the islands of Taipa and Coloane and the Cotai reclamation zone. It lies west of Hong Kong across the Pearl River estuary, and its roughly 712,651 residents in 2024 live on a very small land area.
Create an account to keep this trail. Saving copies its stops into a collection of your own, which you can add to, reorder and share.
Where you have got to in this trail is kept by your own browser and is never sent to us. Clearing your browser data clears it. All trails.