Sister Cities International was created at President Eisenhower’s 1956 White House summit on citizen diplomacy, where he envisioned a network that would be a champion for peace and prosperity by fostering bonds between people from different communities around the world.
To further establish international ties, cities have forged relationships with cities around the world through Sister Cities International.
The Sister Cities program serves to promote international cultural understanding by developing programs that enhance citizen diplomacy, create international goodwill, and support the County’s global trade agenda.
Even as city founder George Merrick was in the beginning stages of creating Coral Gables he dreamed of it as an international city. He was inspired by the great Mediterranean cities and hoped the city would serve as a gateway to the Americas.
Знакомство с историей городов-побратимов
Alexandria, Egypt: A Historical Overview
Alexandria is a major city in Egypt, lying at the western edge of the Nile River Delta, it extends about 40 km (25 mi) along the country's northern coast.
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Founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, Alexandria is one of the largest and most important cities of antiquity and a leading hub for science, culture, and scholarship.
The city was made the capital of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and became the foremost commercial, intellectual, and cultural centre for much of the Hellenistic age and late antiquity; at one time, it was the most populous city in the ancient world. Alexandria retained its status as one of the leading cities of the Mediterranean world for almost a millennium, through the period of Roman and Byzantine rule until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 AD, when a new capital was founded at Fustat, now part of Cairo.
Alexandria was intended to supersede the older Greek colony of Naucratis as a Hellenistic center in Egypt and to be the link between Greece and the rich Nile valley.
After Alexander captured the Egyptian Satrapy from the Persians, Alexander wanted to build a large Greek city on Egypt's coast that would bear his name. He chose the site of Alexandria, envisioning the building of a causeway to the nearby island of Pharos that would generate two great natural harbours.
After Alexander's departure, his viceroy Cleomenes continued the expansion. The architect Dinocrates of Rhodes designed the city, using a Hippodamian grid plan.
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Following Alexander's death in 323 BC, his general Ptolemy Lagides took possession of Egypt and brought Alexander's body to Egypt with him.
Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the centre of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage.
In one century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and, for some centuries more, was second only to Rome.
Foundation and Medieval Growth
Alexander the Great founded the city in 332 BCE after the start of his Persian campaign; it was to be the capital of his new Egyptian dominion and a naval base that would control the Mediterranean.
The choice of the site that included the ancient settlement of Rhakotis (which dates to 1500 BCE) was determined by the abundance of water from Lake Maryūṭ, then fed by a spur of the Canopic Nile, and by the good anchorage provided offshore by the island of Pharos.
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With the breakup of the empire upon Alexander’s death in 323 BCE, control of the city passed to his viceroy, Ptolemy I Soter, who founded the dynasty that took his name.
Alexandria profited from the demise of Phoenician power after Alexander sacked Tyre (332 BCE) and from Rome’s growing trade with the East via the Nile and the canal that then linked it with the Red Sea.
Indeed, Alexandria became, within a century of its founding, one of the Mediterranean’s largest cities and a centre of Greek scholarship and science.
Such scholars as Euclid, Archimedes, Plotinus the philosopher, and Ptolemy and Eratosthenes the geographers studied at the Mouseion, the great research institute founded in the beginning of the 3rd century BCE by the Ptolemies that included the city’s famed library.
The ancient library housed numerous texts, the majority of them in Greek; a “daughter library” was established at the temple of Serapis about 235 BCE.
Alexandria was also home to a populous Jewish colony and was a major centre of Jewish learning; the translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek, the Septuagint, was produced there.
Roman and Byzantine Periods
The decline of the Ptolemies in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE was matched by the rise of Rome. Alexandria played a major part in the intrigues that led to the establishment of imperial Rome.
It was at Alexandria that Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, courted Julius Caesar and claimed to have borne him a son.
In 30 BCE Octavian (later the emperor Augustus) formally brought Alexandria and Egypt under Roman rule.
St. Mark, author of the second gospel in the New Testament, is said to have preached in Alexandria in the mid-1st century CE.
Several outstanding Bible scholars and theologians of the early Christian era were educated in Alexandria, including Origen (c. 185-c. 254), who contributed to an evolving synthesis of Christianity and Greco-Roman philosophy and who headed the city’s famous catechetical school.
Alexandria’s Christian community continued to grow in numbers and influence and resisted Rome’s attempts to impose emperor worship.
By the close of the 4th century, elements of the Christian establishment in Alexandria had also mobilized against the remnants of paganism, destroying the temple of Serapis; other violent clashes broke out between rival gangs and factions based in the city around this time.
During the course of the 4th century, the patriarchs of Alexandria consolidated their position over Egypt’s clergy.
A decisive break occurred at the Council of Chalcedon in 451; the council deposed Dioscorus, the Alexandrian pope, and adopted a Christological statement that was regarded by Egyptian Christians as compromising belief in the divine Son.
Islamic Period
Disaffection with Byzantine rule created the conditions in which Alexandria fell first to the Persians, in 616, and then to the Arabs, in 642.
Though Alexandria surrendered to Muslim Arab expansion without resistance, the conquest was followed by a substantial exodus of the leading elements of the Greek population.
Alexandria was eclipsed politically by the new Arab capital at Al-Fusṭāṭ (which later was absorbed into the modern capital, Cairo); the Coptic patriarchate was transferred there from Alexandria in the 11th century.
Nevertheless, Alexandria continued to flourish as a trading centre, principally for textiles and luxury goods, as Arab influence expanded westward through North Africa and then into Europe.
Following its recovery from the devastation of the bubonic plague in the mid-14th century, Alexandria was able to profit from the growth of the East-West spice trade, which flowed through Egypt.
With the Ottoman defeat of the Mamlūks in 1517, Egypt’s status shifted to that of a province within a wider empire, charge of which fell to the Ottomans.
Under Ottoman rule, the canal linking Alexandria to the Rosetta branch of the Nile was allowed to silt up, strangling the city’s commercial lifeline.
Miami, Florida: A Brief History
Founded in 1896, Miami quickly grew to become one of America's largest cities. Miami-Dade County has established Sister Cities relationships with over 30 cities in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Throughout these years, the program has developed innovative projects which have furthered international cooperation and understanding between the County and its respective Sister Cities.
Sister City Relationships
Miami-Dade County has established Sister Cities relationships with over 30 cities in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The following list includes some of Miami-Dade County's Sister City relationships:
- Asti Province, Italy
- Asuncion, Paraguay
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Cabildo of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
- Casablanca-Settat Region, Morocco
- Commonwealth of the Bahamas
- County Cork, Ireland
- Curitiba, Brazil
- Dakar, Senegal
- Departamento de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia
- Federation of St. Kitts & Nevis Islands
- Georgetown, Guyana
- Iquique, Chile
- Kingston, Jamaica
- Maldonado, Uruguay
- Mancomunidad Gran Cuidad del Sur del Departamento de Guatemala, Guatemala
- Metropolis of Aix-Marseille-Provence, France
- New Taipei City, Taiwan
- Paramaribo, Suriname
- Pereira, Colombia
- Petit Goave, Haiti
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Province of Mendoza, Argentina
- San Jose, Costa Rica
- San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic
- Santo Domingo Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic
- Sao Paulo, Brazil
- State of Monagas, Venezuela
- Stockholm County, Sweden
- Veracruz, Mexico
- Viareggio, Italy
- Cayman Islands, UK
- City of Grand Turk, Turks & Caico Islands
- Lamentin, Guadaloupe
- Pucallpa, Peru
- Barcelona, Spain
- City of Madrid, Spain
- Community of Madrid, Spain
- Southampton, UK
- Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
Additional Sister City Relationships in Florida
Many cities in Florida participate in the Sister Cities program. Sister Cities will recognize cities only when the partnership is filed with them and remove relationships when one of the involved cities makes a formal request.
Partnerships can be active, inactive (no actions taken from any of the partners for some time) or officially canceled. The list below has relationships in all three statuses.
Examples of canceled partnerships are Hialeah-Managua and West Miami-León, Nicaragua, canceled because of political differences during the Sandinista regime; Hollywood-San Salvador, canceled as a protest against the Salvadoran Civil War; and Boca Raton-Spandau Borough, Berlin.
Here are some examples of Sister City Relationships in Florida:
| City in Florida | Sister City |
|---|---|
| Apalachicola | Sassandra, Côte d'Ivoire |
| Bay Harbor Islands | Saumur, France |
| Bonita Springs | Püttlingen, Germany |
| Boynton Beach | Pin Zhen, China |
| Cape Canaveral | Guarda, Portugal |
| Clearwater | Kalamaria, Greece |
| Cocoa Beach | Kfar Saba, Israel |
| Coral Gables | Cartagena, Colombia |
| Coral Springs | Parzhivka, Ukraine |
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