Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii

Lahaina, the royal town

After Kamehameha I united the islands, the seat of the kingdom moved with the king. From about 1820, under his successors Kamehameha II and Kamehameha III, the capital was Lahaina, on the west coast of Maui. Lahaina was a busy port in the whaling era, when hundreds of whaling ships called there each year, and it was the kingdom’s capital for about 25 years.

The move to Honolulu

In 1845 Kamehameha III moved the royal residence and the seat of government to Honolulu, on Oʻahu. Honolulu had the best harbor in the islands and was growing into the kingdom’s commercial center, the place where foreign merchants, diplomats and ships gathered. It has been the capital ever since: of the kingdom until 1893, of the Provisional Government and the Republic of Hawaii, of the US Territory of Hawaii from 1898, and of the state since 1959. The state constitution, in Article XV, names Honolulu as the capital.

ʻIolani Palace

Honolulu is the only state capital with a royal palace. King Kalākaua began ʻIolani Palace in 1879 and moved into it in 1882. It was a modern building for its time: it had electric lights in 1886, several years before the White House.

The palace’s history took a dark turn after the monarchy was overthrown in 1893. Queen Liliʻuokalani, Kalākaua’s sister and successor, was later imprisoned in a room of the palace for months. The building became the seat of the new governments, and for more than seventy years the legislature and other offices worked in the former royal palace, through the territorial era and into statehood. When the State Capitol opened in 1969, the government moved out, and ʻIolani Palace was restored and opened as a museum.

The State Capitol

The Hawaiʻi State Capitol, designed by John Carl Warnecke & Associates with the Honolulu firm Belt, Lemmon & Lo, opened on March 15, 1969. Instead of copying the domed US Capitol, the architects designed a building that reflects the islands themselves. It is open to the sky in the middle, letting in the trade winds and the rain. It is surrounded by a reflecting pool that represents the Pacific Ocean. The two legislative chambers are cone-shaped, suggesting the volcanoes that formed the islands, and the columns fronting the building are shaped like the trunks of coconut palms, eight of them for the eight main islands.

Statues of Queen Liliʻuokalani and of St. Damien, the priest who cared for people with leprosy on Molokaʻi, stand on the grounds.

Honolulu today

Honolulu is the largest city in Hawaii by far. Its urban core had about 350,000 people at the 2020 census, and the City and County of Honolulu, which covers all of Oʻahu, is home to about seven in ten of Hawaii’s residents. Because Hawaii has no incorporated cities, the Census Bureau publishes no separate yearly estimate for Honolulu itself.

Visiting

Visitors can take self-guided tours of the State Capitol on weekdays. ʻIolani Palace, across the street, offers guided and self-guided tours.