Albany trip planner

Albany is the capital of the U.S. state of New York and the seat of Albany County. Roughly 135mi north of the City of New York, Albany developed on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 10mi south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. The population of the City of Albany was 97,856 according to the 2010 census. Albany has close ties with the nearby cities of Troy, Schenectady, and Saratoga Springs, forming a region called the Capital District. This consists mostly of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Metropolitan Statistical Area . The area's 2010 population was 870,716, the 4th-largest MSA in New York and the 58th largest in the country.The first European settlement in this area was by Dutch colonists who built Fort Nassau in 1614 and Fort Orange in 1624. They formed successful relations with both the Mahican and the Mohawk people, two major Native American nations. The fur trade attracted settlers who founded a village called Beverwijck near Fort Orange. In 1664 the English took over and renamed the city as Albany, in honor of the then Duke of Albany, the future James II of England and James VII of Scotland. The city was officially chartered in 1686 under English rule. It became the capital of New York State in 1797, following the United States gaining independence in the American Revolutionary War. Albany is one of the oldest surviving settlements of the original British thirteen colonies, and the longest continuously chartered city in the United States. Its charter is possibly the longest-running instrument of municipal government in the Western Hemisphere.