Are there any intercity rivalries in your country that DON’T involve your largest city/capital?

23 comments

1. Oh, tons of them. Some date back to rivalries between independent duchies centuries so, others are more motivated by football rivalries.

   Notable examples are Nürnberg/Fürth in Franconia and Köln/Düsseldorf on the Rhine. But there’s smaller examples in every corner of the country.

   There’s even rivalries within single cities, like in Villingen-Schwenningen in Baden-Württemberg. The state itself was a political fusion of tribes that can’t stand each other and the two finally independent neighboring towns were merged in the process, against the will of the population.

2. I know Tampere and Turku here in Finland have some kind of beef. I don’t know much about it because as a Helsinkian, it’s in our nature to not care for the rest of country. But If I remember correctly, every year, university students from Tampere travel to central Turku and frantically start jumping up and down in attempt to sink Turku to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

   There was also a petition trying renaming ‘Tampere University’ to ‘Tampere University of Not Turku University’.

   But to be fair, I think most people in Finland hate Turku, its known as the ‘asshole of Finland’. It’s just that the Tampereans take it to a whole new level, they too are a special breed. It’s in the famous Tamperean quote of: *Haista vittu mää oon Tampereelta*!, which roughly translates to ‘Fuck you, I’m from Tampere’.

3. Basel and Zürich have been at odds since around 1501 over which is the most important economic centre in the country. Zürich has been winning for the last hundred years or so.

   A saying in Basel is that Zürich has many amazing sights to behold, the best being the train station where one can get a train back to Basel.

4. Lots, most bigger cities that are close together, Lyon vs Saint Etienne for example, old mining city that boomed early vs the old city that made rare tissue. There is rivalries in britany between Rennes and Nantes, Metz Strasbourg in the north east etc…..

   Paris is always kinda appart from that, Paris is Paris and that’s all.

5. North-eastern England: Newcastle vs. Sunderland. Mostly in football but it’s a rivalry that goes a long way back. Some trace it back to the Civil War. Newcastle was a major Royalist stronghold, with High Anglicans and recusant Catholics as well as members of the gentry loyal to the King. It was famously sieged by Scots Covenenters based in a garrison at Sunderland, and was a base of operations for Charles I for a while. Sunderland meanwhile was largely settled by Puritans who supported Cromwell and the Parliamentarians. There is a folk song about it:

   > Ride through Sandgate, up and down

   > There you’ll see the gallants fighting for the Crown

   > And all the cull cuckolds in Sunderland town

   > With all the bonny blue caps cannot pull them down.

6. You can randomly selected two cities in Tuscany and be sure that there’s a rivalry between them that goes back to some medieval event/battle or something similar.
   Same applies to basically every Region or Land in Italy and Germany

7. Countless, Germany is full of them.

   Where I live, there are more than elsewhere in the whole country.

   We have some dialect barriers, three regional barriers: Rhineland, Sauerland, Westerwald, and some more.

   Even my own county is somehow divided. Going back to the 14th century, the borders of the county haven’t changed. But it was divided for some time and belonged to 2 different Duchies. It became really bizarre, after the Reformation: one part stay Catholic, my part became Lutheran. My part is Rhineland, the other part Westphalia, we have complete different dialect: Ripuarian and Mosella-Frankonian.

   People from my part tend to go to the neighboring town in the Rhineland, while the people from the Catholic part barely go there. You just don’t do it.

8. Yes, basically anywhere close to each other in Italy, and often places that are not that close together.

   As a Palermitano,our biggest rivalry is with Catania.And vice versa.

   This extends to everything! Especially football and food though.

   We have arancine, they have (the much inferior) arancini…

9. The most notorious example I am familiar with is Sabadell and Terrassa. They were rivals during the Industrial Revolution and it lingers on, only aggravated by the fact that they’re both co-capitals of the Vallès Occidental comarca. So they’re constantly arguing over which should be the sole capital.

   It’s mostly in good fun though.

10. I think every German city, every German village has such a rivalry. Here in Cologne it’s Düsseldorf, and this rivalry is also quite well-known. In a nutshell it’s about Beer (Kölsch vs Alt), Culture (which city has the most vivid art scene) and mentality (laid back people vs. rich snobs). I know both cities well and in the end both cities have a lot in common, even if a lot of clichés are true.

    [This video](https://youtu.be/pkJosHXwvj8) from a german language-learning channel is about that rivalry and has some on point comments.

11. People in/around Falkirk (a town) vs people from Fife (a region). It unsurprisingly particularly focusses around football (Falkirk vs Dunfermline), but I’ve never actually been able to find out what the backstory is. I’ve heard from folk that scab miners from Falkirk worked in Fife (and that scab miners from Fife worked in Falkirk) duing a miners strike back in the day, or that it was originally a hockey rivalry, which continued after the Falkirk team stopped. I’m from neither region and only found out it was a thing when I started working around Falkirk.

12. There’s tons, my hometown of Dortmund historically was the place of a beef with the local saxons against the francs, then after the city was established Dortmund had beef with Hörde (nowadays Hörde is a district of Dortmund), then Dortmund had beef with cologne wich is nonexistent nowadays with the two cities indifferent to each other if not even somewhat friendly, since there is a fan friendship between the football clubs of both. At some point there was a bit of a rivalry with Münster about wich of the two was the cultural capital of Westphalia, since the industrial evolution and subsequent destruction of anything of cultural and historical relevance by the allied bombing raids in WWII that discussion doesn’t exist anymore. Nowadays we’re kinda cool with everyone wich is a rarity in Germany. The one thing you shouldn’t do however is show up with a Schalke kit in Dortmund or vice versa with a Dortmund kit in Gelsenkirchen, the best you could expect is verbal abuse and that’s just if you’re lucky. That rivalry is purely based on football though. Other than that the only thing I can think of is sone slight banter between the Rhineland and Westphalia

13. There are quite a few. The two major ones in the north are between Luleå and Piteå, as well as Skellefteå and Umeå. Off the top of my head I can think of a couple down in the south, for example Linköping and Norrköping, and the university cities of Uppsala and Lund.

    Most rivalries are between the major cities of a region, or due to sports (mostly ice hockey and football, but also smaller sports like bandy).

14. Liverpool was a massive shipbuilding and trade port during Britain’s empire days. Manchester was the hub of England’s textile industry where cotton from the America’s was processed into clothes and bed linen.

    Liverpool’s merchants imposed tarifs and dues on Manchester’s mechants for bringing in the cotton and taking goods out so Manchester built a huge canal to make them a “sea port” and bypass Liverpool.

    The cities are still not friends.

    Also Manchester United and Liverpool are the two most successful teams in English history so that adds it’s little sugar on top to the rivalry.

    Each thinks they have better football, culture and music, people and so on.

    It takes about 40m to drive between them btw. It’s not even far

15. There is also Manchester vs. Manchester. We have United and City just a few miles from each other. But Liverpool is usually outer biggest

    Goes back to the Industrial Revolution, where Liverpool was the port for all the cotton that was produced in Manchester.

    The first railway line was between these cities too.

16. The first that comes to my mind is [Bydgoszcz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bydgoszcz) and [Toruń](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toruń). The former is a larger (~330k) city associated with industry; the latter is smaller (~200k) and probably best known for having a relatively-intact Old Town with a lot of Gothic-era buildings and ruins of a castle. The two cities are located some 60km from each other.

    The feud mostly orbits around picturing Bydgoszcz as a post-industrial shithole, and Toruń as a giant open-air museum without any modern-day relevance.

    Toruń folk like to call the other town “Brzydgoszcz” (a portmanteau of the city name and “brzydki”, meaning “ugly”) as well as “Tyfusowo”, in reference to the 19th century typhus epidemic that plagued Bydgoszcz.

    On the other hand, Bydgoszcz folk tend to refer to Toruń people as “Krzyżaki”, in reference to the fact that for many years the town’s been a base of the Teutonic Knights (which the Polish state had a rather un-friendly relationship with, ultimately ending in war), as well as “Prusaki” (Polish for “Prussians”, but also doubles as an alternate name for cockroaches).

    Interestingly, the feud extends to the administrative level, as well. Back when Poland was divided into 49 voivodeships, both Bydgoszcz and Toruń had their own. The 1999 reform reduced the number to 16, with both cities placed in the [Kuyavian-Pomeranian voivodeship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuyavian-Pomeranian_Voivodeship). As can be expected, both cities fought tooth and nail for their status as the administrative center, which ended up in Bydgoszcz becoming the seat of the voivode and Toruń becoming the seat of the local parliament – an usual arrangement, making Kuyavia-Pomerania one of only 2 voivodeships where the two administrative units are not in the same city. Until this day, “more for Bydgoszcz and less for Toruń”, as well as the inverse, are common slogans used in local elections.

17. There is a large rivality between Czechia’s 8th and 9th largest city , Pardubice and Hradec Králové. They are only 20 kilometres apart of each other. I have friends in both of the cities and rivality is strong.

18. Vigo and Corunna, the largest cities in Galicia. Even the regional capital is neither of them but Santiago, which is protected by UNESCO as an architectural jewel. It goes from menial football (soccer) rivalry, to politicians mismanaging tax money from the central government by both wanting to have airports, high speed rail with Madrid, a other BS, making said investments poorer, smaller, and lest effective. They are too close for such futility; London has airports further apart than this cities are to each other.

19. The biggest local one is probably Wrexham and Chester in football. It’s cross-border too – though both teams are in the English pyramid, it’s also an England – Wales thing too.

    That said Wrexham are now back in the Football League since Deadpool and Mac bought them.

    Otherwise there’s Cardiff – Swansea for football, maybe rugby too, but they’re Wales’ two biggest cities…

20. Lol The strange thing would be not having at least 2/3 neighbouring cities to despise with a passion.

    After the fall of the Roman empire and until the unification in 1861, Italy was fragmented into city states and small principalities, with the kingdom of Naples being the exception, so city rivalries are ingrained in national history. Historians often joke that we have been a polarised country since the days Italian city states were either Guelfi (pro Pope) or Ghibellini (pro Holy Roman emperor).

    My hometown, for example, being the biggest city in the region and with a history as an independent comune (a city state formally subject of the HRE and/or the Popes but de facto sovereign), has a rivalry with neighbouring Modena and Ferrara. Well, calling it a rivalry is a bit of a stretch, when they are inferior hillbillies ahah

21. Is there any cities which doesn’t have a millenia old rovalry in Europe because someone stole a cow or a wheele of cheese as the Roman empire was falling ?

    No

    (Bayonne and Biaritz, Toulouse and Bordeaux I think, every Alsatians against every Lorrains…)

22. There are LOADS of rivalries between cities in Portugal.

    Excluding the Lisbon/ Porto one, the most famous is in Minho: the rivalry between Braga/ Guimarães. This rivalry is first mentioned in a papal bull of 1213, so it’s something very old. Another rivalry in Minho is between Póvoa do Varzim and Vila do Conde, although this one is not as fierce today.

    There are also rivalries between Aveiro and Coimbra, in Beira Litoral (and between Ílhavo and Aveiro too), and between Lamego and Peso da Régua, two cities on opposite sides of the River Douro.

    In the south, the Algarve is full of rivalries: Faro and Olhão, Portimão and Lagos, Loulé and Quarteira, and cities in the Barlavento (western half of the Algarve) vs cities in the Sotavento (eastern half).

    In Trás-os-Montes, the rivalry is between Bragança and Miranda do Douro.

    In Beira Interior, theres a rivalry between Castelo Branco and Covilhã.

    In Alentejo, there’s a rivalry between Évora and Beja.

    In the Setúbal district, there’s a rivalry between Setúbal and Sesimbra, and between Grândola and Alcácer do Sal.

    In the Azores, theres a rivalry between Ponta Delgada and Angra do Heroísmo, which reflects the rivalry between the islands of São Miguel and Terceira.

    And these are only the most famous rivalries between big cities. You could go to a small village on the mountains and they would most likely have a rivalry with a neighbouring village.

23. Here in Central Poland we’ve got the towns of Sieradz and Zduńska Wola. Sieradz is way older, it used to be an important place in the middle ages and because of that it sometimes feels more “prestigous”. Meanwhile Zduńska Wola was born as an industrial town and a railroad junction in the 18th century and in its peak outgrew Sieradz significantly (nowadays the towns are practically equal in size).