Port Elizabeth or The Bay is one of the largest cities in South Africa, situated in the Eastern Cape Province, 770 km (478 miles) east of Cape Town. The city, often shortened to PE and nicknamed "The Windy City", stretches for 16 km along Algoa Bay, and is one of the major seaports in South Africa. Port Elizabeth was founded as a town in 1820 to house British settlers as a way of strengthening the border region between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa people. It now forms part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality which has a population of over 1.3 million.