"A city-state is a sovereign microstate that usually consists of a single city and its dependent territories. Historically, this included cities such as Rome, Athens, Carthage, ...
[Read more]
and the Italian city-states during the Renaissance. As of 2020[update], only a handful of sovereign city-states exist, with some disagreement as to which are city-states. A great deal of consensus exists that the term properly applies currently to Monaco, Singapore, and Vatican City.
A number of other small states share similar characteristics, and therefore are sometimes also cited as modern city-states—namely, Qatar, Brunei, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Malta, which each have an urban center comprising a significant proportion of the population, though all have several distinct settlements and a designated or de facto capital city. Occasionally, other small states with high population densities, such as San Marino, are also cited,[10][11] despite lacking a large urban centre characteristic of traditional city-states." - (en.wikipedia.org 29.02.2020)
