DailyGeo › Atlas › Capitals of the world

Capitals of the world

Paramaribo, capital of Suriname: facts and figures

Updated 28 August 2026 · 3 min read · DailyGeo team

Key figures

Climate through the year

Paramaribo averages 25.9 °C from December to February and 26.2 °C from June to August. January is the coldest month of the year and October the warmest, and the city receives 2,038 mm of precipitation in an average year.

What makes it stand out

• Size: 2nd least populous capital in South America (240,000 residents).
• Elevation: 2nd lowest-lying capital in South America (8 m).
• Winter: 2nd mildest capital in South America (25.9 °C).
• Summer: 3rd hottest capital in South America (26.2 °C).
• Rainfall: 3rd wettest capital in South America (2,038 mm).
• Latitude: 3rd northernmost capital in South America (5.85°).

Nearest capitals

Distances are great-circle distances between city centres, which is what the Capitals game measures when it tells you how far a guess was from the answer. Georgetown is the closest capital to Paramaribo.

How to remember it

Reading a figure once rarely fixes it in memory. Attach Paramaribo to a place and a number you already know: it is 344 km from Georgetown, and it is the 155th largest capital in the atlas. Then practise retrieving it. DailyGeo Capitals gives you one mystery capital a day with distance, direction, language and population clues, the memorising method explains the review schedule, and the capitals index lists all 172.

To see how Suriname compares with every other country on figures like these, the richest countries by GDP per capita ranks them on geopolitix, a country-ranking game by the same maker as DailyGeo.

Sources

• City population and coordinates: DailyGeo's own game data, the same figures the Capitals game plays with. Population follows the urban area rather than the commune, which is why no density is quoted.
• Temperature and rainfall: ten-year means (2015 to 2024) computed from ERA5 reanalysis, retrieved through Open-Meteo. Hersbach, H., et al. (2020). The ERA5 global reanalysis. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
• Elevation: terrain height at the city's coordinates in the Copernicus DEM, read through Open-Meteo rather than taken from a curated claim.
• Time zone: resolved from the same coordinates.
• Country figures: the World Bank, latest reported year for each series: Country GDP, GDP per capita, Country population, Life expectancy, Internet users.
• Founding date: Wikidata, earliest recorded founding claim.
• This capital elsewhere: Wikipedia, UNdata, Wikidata.
• Method and limits: How this data was collected explains how each figure was collected and what it does not cover.

The short answer

Keep learning

• Georgetown, capital of Guyana: facts and figures

  Georgetown is the capital of Guyana: 200,000 residents, 2 m above sea level, 26.0 °C from December to February and 26.5 °C from June to August. Key figures and sources.

• Bridgetown, capital of Barbados: facts and figures

  Bridgetown is the capital of Barbados: 110,000 residents, 3 m above sea level, 25.8 °C from December to February and 27.2 °C from June to August. Key figures and sources.

• Caracas, capital of Venezuela: facts and figures

  Caracas is the capital of Venezuela: 2,900,000 residents, 890 m above sea level, 21.1 °C from December to February and 22.9 °C from June to August.

• Capitals of the world: the full list by continent

  Every capital in DailyGeo's atlas, grouped by continent, with population, elevation and winter and summer temperatures, each linking to its own data page.