Did you know Portsmouth has 6 sister cities around the world?

Learn all about the relationship Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has with its six sister cities located in six different countries across the globe. 

Portsmouth is a city of sisterly love. Six sisterly loves, to be precise, in nations worldwide. 

Dwight Eisenhower initiated Sister Cities International nearly 70 years ago to heal strained relationships and promote peace after World War II through cultural, educational, and business exchanges. 

Portsmouth, a seacoast city with a population of approximately 23,000, has been an active member since 1985 and has formal agreements with the following cities based on common interests and connections with the following six cities.

1. Nichinan, Japan: Population 48,000

This relationship, which started in 1985, is Portsmouth’s oldest and most vibrant sisterhood in the program, according to the City of Portsmouth’s website. Like Portsmouth, Nichinan is a bustling coastal city with a history of shipbuilding, lumber, fishing, and tourist industries. The city is just inland from the Pacific Ocean and is bordered by low hills and a colorful seacoast.

The two cities have had educational, cultural, and government interchanges through a yearly high school student exchange program and activities with the Japan-America Society of New Hampshire. The society arranges citizen diplomacy events and a yearly recognition of the signing of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905, brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt. Signed at Wentworth by the Sea, which is still a hotel today, the treaty ended the Russo-Japanese War. The lead diplomat to that peace conference, Baron Jutaro Komura, was born in Nichinan, where the Komura Memorial Hall is named in his honor. On the culinary front, Nichinan, a contemporary Japanese restaurant recently opened in the Hotel Thaxter in Portsmouth, is named after the sister city.

Red gate in Nichinan, Präfektur Miyazaki, Japan. (Winged Jedi/Unsplash)

2. Kitase Akuapim, Ghana: Population 105,000

Sometimes, history is the strongest connection between two cities that are thousands of miles apart. Such is the case of Kitase, Ghana, which became a Portsmouth Sister City in 2004.

Historian Valerie Cunningham, activist and founding member of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, spoke about the dark historical events that bond the two, including the 17th-century Transatlantic Slave Trade. During a 2013 presentation at the Discover Portsmouth Center, she said Strawbery Banke, now a museum, was the spot where young people were sold into slavery as they disembarked from slave ships in the city. A year after Kitase became a sister city, the Black Heritage Trail sponsored a visit to Portsmouth by two kings from Ghana, and nine years later, the organization sponsored Portsmouth representatives on a trip to Ghana.

Kitase is a town in the eastern region of Ghana ruled by a chief, currently Nana Kwasi Ankrah III with a tropical climate driven by winds from West African monsoons. The town is known for its festival of Odiwira held in the fall. It’s a celebration of the harvest and the 1826 victory over the Ashanti army during the battle of Katamansu.

3. Mid and East Antrim, Northern Ireland: Population 135,340

This Northern Ireland location has been a Portsmouth sister city since 1992. It’s a local government district created 10 years ago when the boroughs of Ballymena, Larne, and Carrickfergus merged.

Like its American sister city, this area is known for its visual appeal. The district reaches from the River Bann in the west to the Antrim coast and is designated as an official Area of Outstanding Beauty under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in the United Kingdom.

Some student, cultural, and educational visits have taken place between the two cities. In 2023, Antrim officials hosted a delegation from Portsmouth and, in turn, were invited to Portsmouth’s 400th anniversary celebration. In that invitation, the Portsmouth mayor’s office wrote, “We will be remembering all of those who made a new life and new opportunities in what came to be called New England. These include dozens of ships filled with emigrants from Ireland and their descendants. “We share an official Friendship City bond because of those threads of ancestry and because of our mutual determination to remember those who paved the path we follow.”

Sallagh Braes: A semi-circular amphitheater of cliffs in Antrim. (Philip McErlean/CC BY-ND 2.0)

4. Severodvinsk, Russia: Population 195,200

Severodvinsk was founded in 1917 as an outport for Archangelsk city after the October Revolution. It became Portsmouth’s sister city in 1995.

Its main industry is defense-related, mostly the construction and repair of submarines. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, established in 1800 to build warships, now repairs and modernizes nuclear subs. The Soviet Union’s first nuclear submarine, Leninsky Komsomol, was built there 67 years ago, as was the world’s largest submarine, the Dmitri Donskoy, a Typhoon-class vessel built in the early 1980s and later recorded in the “Guinness Book of World Records.”

Due to the presence of important military shipyards, Severodvinsk became a closed city to foreign and domestic visitors shortly before World War II. When Severodvinsk did open its doors to outsiders in 1995, Portsmouth City Councilor John Hayes visited the sister city, according to an article in Seascoastonline. Because of the current political turmoil due to the war with Ukraine, cultural exchanges with the country are on hold.

5. Pärnu, Estonia: Population 50,640

Like the Port City, Pärnu is a seacoast town popular with tourists. It’s Estonia’s fourth-largest city and is situated halfway between Riga and Tallinn. Known as the “Summer Capital of Estonia,” it’s been a Portsmouth sister city since 1990, and is known for its sandy beaches, bars, restaurants, and spas. And while Portsmouth is one of New Hampshire’s oldest cities (established in 1650), Pärnu beats that by four centuries, as it was founded in 1251 by the bishop of Ösel–Wiek.

and successively controlled by the Teutonic Knights, Poles, Swedes, and Russians. It is now significant as an Estonian port, holiday resort, and center of light industry, including food, wood, and leather processing.

6. Agadir, Morocco: Population 998,000

Agadir is an ancient and large city in Morocco near the foot of the Atlas Mountains, and like Portsmouth, it lies on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the largest seaside resort in North Africa, with a warm climate year-round. It’s known for its spectacular views, epic surfing, and bustling bazaars, and was the site of the 1911 Agadir Incident of 1911—a precursor to World War I. The 3,000-year-old city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1960 but was rebuilt with strict earthquake standards and is now a go-to vacation spot for tourists and residents.

Portsmouth has other international relationships through the Friendship Cities Program, including Portsmouth, England; Szolnok, Hungary; and Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy.

Fortress in Agadir, Morocco. (SnapSaga/Unsplash)

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.