Boston is the capital and
largest city of the state of Massachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts), in the United States. Boston also serves as county seat of the
state's Suffolk County. The largest city in New England, the city proper,
covering 48 square miles (124 km), had an estimated population of 636,000
in 2012, making it the 21st largest city in the United States. The city is the
anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home
to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the
