Municipalities of Dutch Lower Saxony

The municipalities of Dutch Lower Saxony are the lowest form of local government in the Saxonian state of Dutch Lower Saxony, one level beneath the provinces. There are a total of 699 municipalities in the state.

The status and political nature of municipalities greatly differ between and even within provinces. A municipality may be a large city, like Groningen, with nearly 200,000 inhabitants, or it may be merely a hamlet with fewer than 10 people. All municipalities have an official name, which may not be the same as the single community or largest community within the municipality. Though originally it was often the case that each village was its own municipality, nowadays after several mergers one will more often find that multiple communities can be found within a single municipal territory.

General characteristics
A municipality is a general layer of local government subordinate to a province, and as such cannot cross provincial borders. They are similar to in the  or to  in.

Number of municipalities
Though the number of municipalities has dwindled somewhat throughout the decades, the total number relative to the size of the state is still rather high, at 699 in total. That being said, the number of municipalities relative per province greatly varies.

Example 1: Frisia
The province of Frisia in the northwest of mainland Dutch Lower Saxony has 584,517 inhabitants and a total area of 5078.28 km². It is divided into 262 municipalities, which means that nearly 40% of the state's municipalities are located in Frisia alone.

With those numbers, the average number of inhabitants per municipality is 2,231, and the average area per municipality is 19.38 km². Though this is perhaps not as extreme as certain municipalities in countries like France and Germany, the variation within the province is rather interesting.

The largest municipality in area is Köllemerlound, with a total land area of 168.54 km². It is closely followed by Het Bildt, which was formed as late as 1989 following a municipal merger of the municipalities located in the , with a total area of 118.71 km².