Yangon

Sister cities

• Yangzhou
• Fukuoka
• Busan
• Kathmandu
• Ho Chi Minh City
• Quezon City
• Haikou
• Kunming
• Nanning

History

Yangon was founded as Dagon in the early 11th century () by the Mon people, who inhabited Lower Burma at that time. Dagon became an important pilgrimage pagoda town, starting in the 14th century, during the Hanthawaddy kingdom. Notable governors of Dagon included Princess Maha Dewi, who ruled the town from 1364 to 1392, and her grandniece, Shin Saw Pu, who later became the only female queen regnant in Burmese history. Queen Saw Pu built a palace next to the Shwedagon Pagoda in the town in 1460 and spent her semi-retired life at that palace until she died in 1471. In 1755, King Alaungpaya, the founder of the Konbaung dynasty, captured Dagon, added settlements around it, and called the enlarged town "Yangon". In the 1790s, the East India Company opened a factory in Yangon. The estimated population of Yangon in 1823 was about 30,000. The British captured Yangon during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26), but returned the city to Burmese rule after the war. The city was destroyed by a fire in 1841. The British captured Yangon and all of Lower Burma in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, and subsequently transformed Yangon into the commercial and political hub of British Burma. After the war, the British moved the capital of British Burma from Moulmein (present-day Mawlamyine) to Yangon. Based on the design by army engineer Lt. Alexander Fraser, the British constructed a new city on a grid plan on delta land, bounded to the east by the Pazundaung Creek and to the south and west by the Yangon River. Yangon became the capital of all British-ruled Burma after the British had captured Upper Burma in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885. By the 1890s, Yangon's growing population and commerce gave birth to prosperous residential suburbs to the north of Royal Lake (Kandawgyi)…

Geography

Yangon is located in Lower Burma (Myanmar) at the convergence of the Yangon and Bago Rivers about 30 km (19 mi) away from the Gulf of Martaban at 16°48' North, 96°09' East (16.8, 96.15). Its standard time zone is UTC/GMT +6:30 hours. It is located 23 metres above sea level. Due to its location on the Irrawaddy Delta, intertidal flat ecosystems occur adjacent to the city. Yangon has a tropical monsoon climate (Am) under the Köppen climate classification system. The city features a lengthy wet season from May through October where a substantial amount of rainfall is received; and a dry season from November through April, where little rainfall is seen. It is primarily due to the heavy rainfall received during the rainy season that makes Yangon fall under the tropical monsoon climate category. From 1961 to the 1990s, average temperatures show little variance, with average highs ranging from and average lows ranging from . Yangon is prone to tropical cyclones. In 2008, Cyclone Nargis made landfall as a Category 4 cyclone, making it the worst cyclone on record in the country.

Most-observed species

• House Crow

  Corvus splendens Vieillot, 1817 · Aves
  649
• Rock Pigeon

  Columba livia J.F.Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  464
• Common Myna

  Acridotheres tristis (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  428
• Asian Koel

  Eudynamys scolopaceus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  355
• Spotted Dove

  Spilopelia chinensis (Scopoli, 1786) · Aves
  335
• Eurasian Tree Sparrow

  Passer montanus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  324
• Jungle Myna

  Acridotheres fuscus (Wagler, 1827) · Aves
  309
• White-throated Kingfisher

  Halcyon smyrnensis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  296

Most recent

• M 3.5 — 2026-07-04
  12 km E of Kanbe, Burma (Myanmar)
• M 5.2 — 2026-05-18
  41 km SSE of Syriam, Burma (Myanmar)
• M 4.5 — 2026-05-02
  25 km W of Maubin, Burma (Myanmar)
• M 4.4 — 2026-01-19
  32 km S of Tharyarwady, Burma (Myanmar)
• M 3.9 — 2025-10-17
  22 km N of Yangon, Burma (Myanmar)
• M 4.6 — 2025-08-21
  70 km S of Thongwa, Burma (Myanmar)