Raleigh (; RAH-lee) is the capital city of the make a clean breast of North Carolina and the chair of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeast, the 41st-most populous city in the U.S., and the largest city of the Research Triangle metro area. Raleigh is known as the “City of Oaks” for its many oak trees, which line the streets in the heart of the city. The city covers a land area of 147.6 sq mi (382 km). The U.S. Census Bureau counted the city’s population as 474,069 in the 2020 census. It is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. The city of Raleigh is named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who acknowledged the directionless Roanoke Colony in present-day Dare County.

Raleigh is home to North Carolina State University (NC State) and is portion of the Research Triangle together taking into consideration Durham (home of Duke University and North Carolina Central University) and Chapel Hill (home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The state of the Research Triangle (often abbreviated to the “Triangle”) originated after the 1959 establishment of Research Triangle Park (RTP), located in Durham and Wake counties, among the three cities and universities. The Triangle encompasses the U.S. Census Bureau’s Raleigh-Durham-Cary Combined Statistical Area (CSA), which had an estimated population of 2,037,430 in 2013. The Raleigh Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated population of 1,390,785 in 2019.

Most of Raleigh is located within Wake County, with a little portion extending into Durham County. The towns of Cary, Morrisville, Garner, Clayton, Wake Forest, Apex, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina, Knightdale, Wendell, Zebulon, and Rolesville are some of Raleigh’s primary nearby suburbs and satellite towns.

Raleigh is an early example in the United States of a planned city. Following the American Revolutionary War in imitation of the U.S. gained independence, the Place was chosen as the site of the acknowledge capital in 1788 and incorporated in 1792 as such. The city was originally laid out in a grid pattern similar to the North Carolina State Capitol at the center, in Union Square. During the American Civil War, the city was spared from any significant battle. It fell to the Union in the closing days of the fighting and struggled gone the economic hardships in the postwar period, related to the reconstitution of labor markets, over-reliance on agriculture and the social unrest of the Reconstruction Era. The initiation of the Research Triangle Park (RTP) in 1959 helped create tens of thousands of jobs in the fields of science and technology. By the forward 21st century, Raleigh had become one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States.