Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut and one of the oldest cities in the United States of America. It was the chair of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county paperwork in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates past the 2010 United States census have indicated that Hartford is the fourth-largest city in Connecticut behind a 2020 population of 121,054, behind the coastal cities of Bridgeport, New Haven, and Stamford.

Hartford was founded in 1635 and is in the middle of the oldest cities in the United States. It is house to the country’s oldest public art museum (Wadsworth Atheneum), the oldest publicly funded park (Bushnell Park), the oldest for ever and a day published newspaper (the Hartford Courant), and the second-oldest auxiliary school (Hartford Public High School). It is also home to the Mark Twain House, where the author wrote his most well-known works and raised his family, among further historically significant sites. Mark Twain wrote in 1868, “Of anything the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see this is the chief.”

Hartford has been the sole capital of Connecticut in the past 1875. Before then, New Haven and Hartford alternated as dual capitals, as portion of the appointment by which the Colony of New Haven was absorbed into the Colony of Connecticut in 1664.

Hartford was the richest city in the United States for several decades later the American Civil War. Since 2015, it has been one of the poorest cities in the U.S., with 3 out of all 10 families living below the poverty threshold. In severe contrast, the Greater Hartford metropolitan statistical Place was ranked 32nd of 318 metropolitan areas in total economic production and 8th out of 280 metropolitan statistical areas in per capita allowance in 2015.