Madagascar's hill capital sits highest among island nations
Antananarivo—Tana for short—crowns Madagascar at 1,280 m (4,199 ft), the loftiest national capital among island countries. Merina people still form most of its 1,274,225 (2018) residents; the metro nears three million. King Andrianampoinimerina reunited Imerina and restored the city as capital in 1794.
Analamanga's administrative heart hosts presidency, parliament, and supreme court. The city has been the island's largest population center since at least the 1700s. After Imerina split into four quadrants in 1710, Antananarivo ruled the south until Ambohimanga's king reconquered it. All eighteen Malagasy ethnic groups plus Chinese, Indian, and European communities share the hills.
Colonial French Tananarive shorthand never erased the Malagasy name that still means, roughly, city of a thousand.
Altitude, Merina history, and modern ministries stack on the same ridgelines overlooking the highlands.
The site began as Analamanga, meaning Blue Forest, a town founded by the Vazimba, regarded as the island's first inhabitants. The Merina ruler Andrianjaka drove them off the hilltop and built his fortified royal compound, the rova, there, and Andriamasinavalona later gave the city its present name and laid out Andohalo square. By 1810, when Radama I took the throne, it was Madagascar's biggest and richest city, with more than 80,000 residents. Ranavalona I hired Jean Laborde, a shipwrecked craftsman, to build Manjakamiadana, the largest palace at the Rova, between 1839 and 1841. Until the mid-nineteenth century the town hugged the summit, now called the upper town, before spilling downhill. French troops attacked in September 1894, and after a shell tore through a Rova building, killing many, the queen surrendered; the damage was never repaired. Today the city's council struggles, short of money and hampered by mismanagement, with overcrowding, traffic, waste and pollution.
Source: Antananarivo
