The city, often shortened to PE and nicknamed "The Friendly City" or "The Windy City", stretches for 16 km along Algoa Bay, and is one of the major seaports in South Africa. It is also referred to as Africa's Watersport Capital.

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 tribe. It now forms part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality which has a population of over 1.3 million.