Dover is the capital and second-largest city of the U.S. state of Delaware. It is in addition to the county seat of Kent County and the principal city of the Dover, DE, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses everything of Kent County and is portion of the Philadelphia–Wilmington–Camden, PA–NJ–DE–MD, Combined Statistical Area. It is located upon the St. Jones River in the Delaware River coastal plain. It was named by William Penn for Dover in Kent, England (for which Kent County is named). As of 2010, the city had a population of 36,047.

The city is named after Dover, Kent, in England. First recorded in its Latinised form of Portus Dubris, the name derives from the Brythonic word for waters (dwfr in Middle Welsh). The similar element is gift in the town’s French (Douvres) and Modern Welsh (Dofr) forms.

Dover was founded as the court town for newly customary Kent County in 1683 by William Penn, the bureaucrat of the territory generally known as the “Lower Counties upon the Delaware.” Later, in 1717, the city was officially laid out by a special commission of the Delaware General Assembly. The capital of the let in of Delaware was moved here from New Castle in 1777 because of its central location and relative safety from British raiders on the Delaware River. Because of an encounter passed in October 1779, the assembly elected to meet at any place in the make a clean breast they axiom fit, meeting successively in Wilmington, Lewes, Dover, New Castle, and Lewes again, until it finally arranged down continuously in Dover in October 1781. The city’s central square, known as The Green, was the location of many rallies, troop reviews, and other patriotic events. To this day, The Green remains the heart of Dover’s historic district and is the location of the Delaware Supreme Court and the Kent County Courthouse.

Dover was most famously the house of Caesar Rodney, the popular wartime leader of Delaware during the American Revolution. He is known to have been buried uncovered Dover, but the perfect location of his grave is unknown. A cenotaph in his praise is erected in the cemetery of the Christ Episcopal Church near The Green in Dover.