Every country in Europe
Europe, all the way down.
Nine regions, 50 countries, 130 travel regions and 319 cities. The regions below are editorial travel regions rather than administrative ones: they group places that feel like each other and are usually visited together.
Each of the 50 countries above is drawn on its own, so the frontiers are the picture. Russia's outline stops at 52°E, where this atlas's map data ends, not at a border.
5 countries · 46 destinations
The Nordics
Long light in summer, long dark in winter, and a coastline that keeps folding back on itself.
Norway
A country shaped by water that had somewhere to be.
Sweden
An archipelago capital, a thousand miles of forest, and a country that would rather you were comfortable than impressed.
Denmark
Small, flat, bicycled, and disproportionately good at deciding how things should look.
Finland
Forest, lake, sauna, silence — and a design tradition that came out of all four.
Iceland
A geological work in progress, with a literary tradition older than most European states.
3 countries · 12 destinations
The Baltic States
Three small countries with three unrelated languages, hanseatic old towns and a shared, recent memory of leaving.
2 countries · 18 destinations
Britain & Ireland
Two islands, four nations, and a weather system that makes the landscape green and the pubs necessary.
5 countries · 42 destinations
Western Europe
Where the rail network is densest and the distance between a cathedral and a beach is measured in hours.
France
The most visited country on earth, and still mostly empty fifty kilometres from anywhere famous.
Netherlands
A country built on purpose, mostly below sea level, and cycled end to end.
Belgium
Three languages, six governments, the best beer in the world and a genuine talent for not explaining itself.
Luxembourg
A fortress city on a gorge, a wine river, and free public transport across the whole country.
Monaco
Two square kilometres of rock, casino and Grand Prix circuit, wedged between France and the sea.
9 countries · 43 destinations
Alpine & Central Europe
The high middle of the continent — mountain passes above, imperial capitals below, and trains through both.
Germany
Sixteen states that were separate countries within living memory, and still behave like it.
Switzerland
The most expensive country in Europe and the one that most reliably justifies it.
Austria
An imperial capital with a small country attached, most of it vertical.
Liechtenstein
Twenty-five kilometres long, ruled from a castle on the hill, and walkable end to end in a day.
Czechia
The most beautiful city in central Europe, and a country that drinks more beer per head than any other.
Poland
A country that was erased from the map for 123 years and rebuilt its capital from paintings.
Slovakia
The smallest high mountains in Europe, more castles per head than anywhere, and hardly anyone looking.
Hungary
A thermal-water capital on the Danube, a language related to almost nothing, and sweet wine that outlived empires.
Slovenia
Alps, karst caves, vineyards and 46 kilometres of coast, all within two hours of each other.
9 countries · 94 destinations
The Mediterranean
Three peninsulas and a scatter of islands that have been trading, arguing and cooking with each other for three thousand years.
Spain
Several countries wearing one flag, with the second-highest average altitude in Europe.
Portugal
Europe's western edge, facing an ocean it once mapped, with the oldest fixed borders on the continent.
Italy
A country invented in 1861 out of places that still think of themselves first.
Greece
Six thousand islands, of which two hundred and twenty-seven are inhabited, and a mainland almost nobody visits.
Malta
Three inhabited islands of limestone, holding temples older than the pyramids and a city built by knights.
Cyprus
The last divided capital in Europe, on an island of Byzantine churches and mountain wine.
Andorra
A Pyrenean co-principality with two heads of state, no airport, and the highest capital in Europe.
San Marino
The world's oldest surviving republic, on a limestone crag with three towers on the ridge.
Vatican City
The smallest state in the world, at 0.49 square kilometres, and one of its largest art collections.
9 countries · 40 destinations
The Adriatic & Balkans
Mountains that end in a clear sea, ottoman and habsburg layers in the same street, and Europe's least crowded coast.
Croatia
A thousand islands, a Roman emperor's palace still lived in, and lakes that fall into each other.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Where the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian worlds meet in one street, and the 1990s are still within touching distance.
Serbia
A confluence capital with the best nightlife in the Balkans, and monasteries frescoed eight hundred years ago.
Montenegro
A drowned river canyon that looks like a fjord, with black mountains straight up behind it.
North Macedonia
One of the oldest lakes on earth, a bazaar that never stopped trading, and a capital that rebuilt itself in marble.
Albania
Closed to the world until 1991, and now the least developed and least expensive coast on the Mediterranean.
Kosovo
Europe's youngest country by both age and population, with medieval monasteries and a mountain trail into two neighbours.
Bulgaria
Thracian gold, Orthodox monasteries, rose fields and the cheapest good skiing in Europe.
Romania
Saxon fortified churches, painted monasteries, and the largest population of brown bears in Europe.
4 countries · 8 destinations
Eastern Europe
The wide flat east — forest, steppe and river — where travel advice matters more than a guidebook.
Ukraine advisory
The largest country wholly within Europe, with the mother of Slavic cities on the Dnipro.
Moldova
The world's largest wine cellar, measured in kilometres, under one of Europe's least visited countries.
Belarus advisory
Half forest, with the last primeval woodland in Europe and a capital rebuilt entirely in Stalinist stone.
Russia advisory
The European part alone is larger than any other country on the continent, and contains two of its greatest cities.
4 countries · 16 destinations
The Caucasus & the Bosphorus
Europe's contested eastern edge: wine older than the alphabet, mountains higher than the Alps, and a city on two continents.
Georgia
Eight thousand years of winemaking, its own alphabet, and mountains higher than the Alps.
Armenia
The first state to adopt Christianity, in 301, with monasteries in gorges and a mountain it can see but not reach.
Azerbaijan
Fire that comes out of the ground, a walled medieval city, and oil money spent on architecture.
Türkiye
A city on two continents, and a Mediterranean coast with more classical ruins than Greece.
The shape beside each region is the countries that region is made of, framed on its own ground rather than on the continent: the drawing changes scale between bands, so what tells the Nordics from the Baltic States is the shape of the region and not its share of one map. A macro region is the one grouping in this atlas with real borders behind it — a travel region is a set of destinations and is shown as those destinations rather than given a boundary it does not have. Drawn from Natural Earth 1:110m admin 0 countries, public domain.