Harare Harare Harare (; officially named Salisbury until 1982) is the capital and most populous city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 960.6 km (371 mi) and an estimated population of 1,606,000 in 2009, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area in 2006. Situated in northeastern Zimbabwe in the country's Mashonaland region, Harare is a metropolitan province, which also incorporates the municipalities of Chitungwiza and Epworth. The city sits on a plateau at an elevation of above sea level and its climate falls into the subtropical highland category. The city was founded in 1890 by the Pioneer Column, a
Zimbabwean art pottery indicates that the people of the Late Iron Age were settled agriculturists and they have been categorised as forming groups such as the Harare culture and the Leopard’s Kopje culture: the latter established in 980 AD in a site called K2. This group moved to Mapungubwe where they used stone walls to separate the ruling class from the rest of the population. This settlement was abandoned in the thirteenth century at around the time that a now much better-known site was developed by others who lived on the Zimbabwean plateau. This was Great Zimbabwe, which dates from about 1250–1500