Baltimore

Maryland's largest city, Baltimore is also the 30th most populated city in the United States, with a projected 2020 population of 585,708 people. Baltimore is the most populous city in Maryland and the 30th most populous city in the US. Baltimore was proclaimed as an independent city by the Maryland Constitution in 1851, and it is now the biggest independent city in the United States, with a population of 1.3 million people. As of 2017, the population of the Baltimore metro region was expected to be slightly less than 2.802 million people, ranking it as the 21st most populous metropolitan region in the United States. Baltimore is located approximately 40 miles (64 kilometres) northeast of Washington, D.C., making it a principal city in the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA), which is the third-largest CSA in the United States, according to the most recent estimates. The city had a population of 9,797,063 in 2018.

Susquehannock Native Americans, who were predominantly situated farther north than where the city of Baltimore was subsequently founded, utilised the Baltimore area as hunting grounds prior to European arrival. The Port of Baltimore was created in 1706 by colonists from the Province of Maryland to assist the tobacco trade with Europe, and the Town of Baltimore was formed in 1729 by colonists from the Province of Maryland. A crucial conflict of the War of 1812, it culminated in the unsuccessful British attack of Fort McHenry, during which Francis Scott Key authored a song that would ultimately become "The Star-Spangled Banner," which was later proclaimed as the American national anthem in 1931. As a result of the 1861 Pratt Street Riot, the city saw some of the first acts of violence related with the American Civil War in the United States.

Many of Baltimore's neighbourhoods have a long and illustrious history. Fell's Point, Federal Hill, and Mount Vernon are just a few of the city's historic districts that were included on the National Register of Historic Places in the early twentieth century. These buildings were added to the National Register between 1969 and 1971, shortly after historic preservation law was implemented in the United States of America. Baltimore has the highest concentration of public sculptures and monuments per population of any city in the nation. More than 65,000 of the city's buildings (almost one-third of its total) are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which is more than any other city in the United States.