We took the coordinates of every national capital and measured the straight-line distance to every waterfall in the index. Anything within 60 km made the list: close enough for a half-day with a taxi or a local bus, and in several cases close enough to walk. The distances below are as the crow flies, from the capital's centre point in Wikidata, so allow for the roads.
The closest twenty
- Shinjuku Niagara Falls: 0 km from Tokyo
- Rideau Falls: 2 km from Ottawa
- Chaudière Falls (Ontario): 2 km from Ottawa
- Hog's Back Falls: 6 km from Ottawa
- Boyana Waterfall: 9 km from Sofia
- Jhor waterfall: 10 km from Kathmandu
- Skakavac: 11 km from Sarajevo
- Jurong Falls: 11 km from Singapore
- Berloi Waterfall: 12 km from Dili
- Álafoss: 13 km from Reykjavík
- Sault Falls: 14 km from Castries
- Tufton Hall Waterfall: 15 km from St. George's
- Simba waterfall: 16 km from Kathmandu
- Thur waterfalls: 17 km from Vaduz
- Apoquindo Waterfall: 18 km from Santiago
- Abshar Dogholu: 19 km from Tehran
- Petites Chutes de la Lukaya: 19 km from Kinshasa
- Kanching Falls: 19 km from Kuala Lumpur
- Hinulugang Taktak: 20 km from Manila
- Tröllafoss: 21 km from Reykjavík
The full list of 60 is on the capital cities list, and the same idea for cities of 700,000 people or more is on the big cities list.
Why Ottawa keeps appearing
Canada's capital sits where the Rideau drops into the Ottawa River, which drops over the Chaudière a few kilometres upstream, with Hog's Back on the Rideau above both. Three waterfalls inside a capital is unusual; most of the entries on this list are a bus ride out of town rather than in it. The other repeat is Wellington: New Zealand's hills put several small falls within reach of the city, and the Tararua foothills add more.
A note on the small ones
Some of the falls closest to a capital are small, and one or two are partly engineered. We have left them in, because the point of this list is reach rather than grandeur: a 10-metre fall in a city park is still falling water, and still a better hour than the hotel gym.
