Gotham City is a fictional city appearing in DC Comics, and is best known as the home of Batman. Batman's place of residence was first identified as Gotham City in Batman #4 (Winter 1940). Gotham City is based on many large cities, especially New York City, but also Baltimore, Newark, Chicago, London, Boston and Montreal.

The longstanding nickname "Gotham" was first attached to New York in 1807 by Washington Irving in his magazine Salmagundi. Writer Bill Finger is credited with the creation of Gotham City. Finger commented on the naming of the city and reasoning for changing Batman's locale from Manhattan to a fictional city: "Originally I was going to call Gotham City 'Civic City'.

Then I tried Capital City, then Coast City. Then I flipped through the phone book and spotted the name 'Gotham Jewelers' and said, 'That's it', Gotham City. We didn't call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it." In Swamp Thing #53, Alan Moore wrote a fictional history for Gotham City that other writers have generally followed.

According to Moore's tale, a Norwegian mercenary founded Gotham City and the British later took it over—a story that parallels the founding of New York by the Dutch (as New Amsterdam) and later takeover by the British. During the American Revolutionary War, Gotham City was the site of a major battle (paralleling the Battle of Brooklyn and the Battle of Long Island in the American Revolution). Rumors held it to be the site of various occult rites.

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