Who is Coventry twinned with?

Coventry is twinned with 26 other towns (or cities) and the number has increased steadily since the second World war. There are three key, sometimes overlapping, reasons for twinning:

Solidarity, support and reconciliation. This gave the original impetus for twinning. There was an intense feeling of support and sympathy for the people of Stalingrad during the second world which led to official ties with the city. Meanwhile, Coventry's own experience of blitz had encouraged it to become a city of reconciliation and links were established with Kiel and later Dresden. During the 1950's there was a further concern to promote peace with countries within the soviet sphere of influence which encouraged links with cities in east European countries.

Country of origin. In some cases there were substantial numbers of Coventry citizens who had come from or had close ties with an overseas city, this was for example the case for the twining with Cork, and Kingston, Jamaica - in the case of Kingston there was a lot of support for twinning from the West Indies High Commission in London and local people with ties to the West Indies.

Economic benefit. It is hoped that a formal link will make it easier for local firms to access overseas markets, and in EU countries to access European funding.Economic ties were, example, important in the link with the Chinese city of Jinan.

However, sometimes twinning is a matter of chance and circumstance. The first meetings of international twinning associations were held in France and hence the links with St-Etienne in particular. There were also a couple of twinnings with towns called Coventry for obvious reasons (there are at least 11 other Coventrys in the world, most in USA, so there is more scope here!) and with Parkes in Australia (Sir Henry Parkes, a leading figure in 19th century Australian politics, came from Coventry).

The full list of twinned towns and cities is given below and you can access further short 'pen portraits' of these cities here.

Some links, have been stronger than others, for example click on the links to Cork, Dresden, Volgograd and Warsaw. There is a further strong link with Jalandhar though this is yet to be officially twinned.

There is little appetite for more formal twinning and many feel that so many links are unmanageable, certainly some of them are dormant. However, international links are being created and strengthened informally and this more bottom up approach to twinning perhaps reflects the future:

Year Twinned	City / Town	Country	Population	Miles from Coventry
1944	Volgograd (previously Stalingrad)	Russia	mid	2,009
1947	Kiel	Germany	mid	548
1947	Lidice	Czech Republic	mid	787
1955	St-Etienne	France	mid	600
1956	Dresden	Germany	mid	652
1956	Parkes	Australia	small	10,622
1957	Sarajevo	Bosnia- Herzegovina	mid	1,084
1957	Warsaw	Poland,	mid	1,044
1957	Belgrade	Serbia	mid	1,148
1957	Caen	France	mid	261
1957	Graz	Austria	mid	835
1958	Arnhem	Netherlands	mid	287
1959	Ostrava	Czech Republic	mid	874
1960	Bologna	Italy	mid	783
1960	Cork	Ireland	mid	391
1962	Coventry	Connecticut, USA	small	3,272
1962	Dunaujvaros	Hungary	small	1,044
1962	Galati	Romania	mid	1,409
1962	Kecskemet	Hungary	mid	1,096
1962	Kingston	Jamaica	mid	4,515
1963	Granby, Quebec	Canada	small	3,137
1963	Windsor, Ontario	Canada	mid	3,784
1971	Coventry, Rhode Island	USA	small	3,250
1972	Cornwall, Ontario	Canada	small	3,670
1972	Coventry, New York state	USA	small	3,382
1983	Jinan	China	large	5,324

^{Population numbers can change rapidly - here we divide between large cities (more than 1 million inhabitants), mid range cities (100, 000 - <1,000,000) and small towns (<100, 000) as of 2010 census.}

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