Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat and largest city of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's 2020 population of 524,943 makes it the sixth-largest city in California and the ninth-largest capital in the United States. Sacramento is the seat of the California Legislature and the Governor of California, making it the state's political center and a hub for lobbying and think tanks. It features the California State Capitol Museum.
Sacramento is also the cultural and economic core of the Sacramento metropolitan area, which at the 2020 census had a population of 2,397,382, the fifth-largest in California.
Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area was inhabited by the historic Nisenan, Maidu, and other indigenous peoples of California. Spanish cavalryman Gabriel Moraga surveyed and named the Río del Santísimo Sacramento in 1808, after the Blessed Sacrament, referring to the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.