The City and Borough of Sitka, formerly called New Archangelsk (Russian: "Новоaрхангельск" or "Ново-Архангельск"; transliterated: "Novoarkhangelsk" or "New-Arkhangelsk") under Russian Rule, is a unified city-borough located on Baranof Island and the southern half of Chichagof Island in the Alexander Archipelago of the Pacific Ocean (part of the Alaska Panhandle), in the U.S. state of Alaska. With a population of 8,881 as of 2010, Sitka is the fourth-largest city by population in Alaska. Urban Sitka (Downtown) 57°03′5.62″N 135°20′19.11″W / 57.0515611°N 135.3386417°W / 57.0515611; -135.3386417, the part that is usually thought of as the "city" of Sitka, is situated on the west side of Baranof Island.

The current name "Sitka" (derived from Sheet’ká, a contraction of the Tlingit name Shee At'iká) means "People on the Outside of Shee", Sheet’-ká X'áat'l (often expressed simply as Shee) being the Tlingit name for Baranof Island.

Sitka's location was originally settled by the Tlingit people over 10,000 years ago. The Russian heritage of Sitka did not begin until Old Sitka was founded in 1799 by Alexandr Baranov, the governor of Russian America. Baranov arrived under the auspices of the Russian-American Company, a "semi-official" colonial trading company chartered by Tsar Paul I.

Alaska (ⁱ/əˈlæskə/) is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait. Alaska is the 4th least populous and the least densely populated of the 50 United States. Approximately half of Alaska's 722,718 residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area.

Alaska was purchased from Russia on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million ($120 million in today's^[when?] dollars) at approximately two cents per acre ($4.74/km²). The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized (or incorporated) territory on May 11, 1912, and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.

The name "Alaska" (Аляска) was already introduced in the Russian colonial period, when it was used only for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or, more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed". It is also known as Alyeska, the "great land", an Aleut word derived from the same root.