Boston is the capital and largest city of the US state of Massachusetts, officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Boston also serves as county seat of the state's Suffolk County. The largest city in New England, the city proper, covering 48 square miles , had an estimated population of 636,000 in 2012, making it the 21st largest city in the United States. The city is the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region is home to 7.6 million people, making it the sixth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States. One of the oldest cities in the United States, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan colonists from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the BattleSee More