The European year
April in Europe
15 recurring fixtures, 5 countries at their best and 20 in the quieter shoulder — which is usually where you should be going.
On in April
Genocide Remembrance Day
Yerevan
Surva and Orthodox Easter
Nationwide
Orthodox Easter
Nationwide
Orthodox Easter
Nationwide
Orthodox Easter — the biggest event of the year
Nationwide, especially the islands
Budapest Spring Festival
Budapest
Éimaischen pottery market
Luxembourg City and Nospelt
King's Day — the whole country in orange, and a national flea market
Nationwide, especially Amsterdam
Bulb season at Keukenhof
Lisse
Easter in Bucovina, with painted eggs
Bucovina
Orthodox Easter
Nationwide
Investiture of the Captains Regent
City of San Marino
Semana Santa processions
Seville, Málaga, Valladolid
Easter, with pysanky decorated eggs
Nationwide
Easter Mass and Urbi et Orbi
St Peter's Square
At their best in April
Peak season: the weather works, everything is open, and so is everyone else's calendar.
Azerbaijan
Fire that comes out of the ground, a walled medieval city, and oil money spent on architecture.
Cyprus
The last divided capital in Europe, on an island of Byzantine churches and mountain wine.
Netherlands
A country built on purpose, mostly below sea level, and cycled end to end.
Türkiye
A city on two continents, and a Mediterranean coast with more classical ruins than Greece.
Vatican City
The smallest state in the world, at 0.49 square kilometres, and one of its largest art collections.
Quieter, and often better, in April
Shoulder season. The Journey Planner scores these upward rather than downward for exactly this month.
Armenia
The first state to adopt Christianity, in 301, with monasteries in gorges and a mountain it can see but not reach.
Belgium
Three languages, six governments, the best beer in the world and a genuine talent for not explaining itself.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Where the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian worlds meet in one street, and the 1990s are still within touching distance.
Czechia
The most beautiful city in central Europe, and a country that drinks more beer per head than any other.
France
The most visited country on earth, and still mostly empty fifty kilometres from anywhere famous.
Georgia
Eight thousand years of winemaking, its own alphabet, and mountains higher than the Alps.
Germany
Sixteen states that were separate countries within living memory, and still behave like it.
Hungary
A thermal-water capital on the Danube, a language related to almost nothing, and sweet wine that outlived empires.
Italy
A country invented in 1861 out of places that still think of themselves first.
Kosovo
Europe's youngest country by both age and population, with medieval monasteries and a mountain trail into two neighbours.
Luxembourg
A fortress city on a gorge, a wine river, and free public transport across the whole country.
Malta
Three inhabited islands of limestone, holding temples older than the pyramids and a city built by knights.
Moldova
The world's largest wine cellar, measured in kilometres, under one of Europe's least visited countries.
Monaco
Two square kilometres of rock, casino and Grand Prix circuit, wedged between France and the sea.
North Macedonia
One of the oldest lakes on earth, a bazaar that never stopped trading, and a capital that rebuilt itself in marble.
Portugal
Europe's western edge, facing an ocean it once mapped, with the oldest fixed borders on the continent.
Romania
Saxon fortified churches, painted monasteries, and the largest population of brown bears in Europe.
San Marino
The world's oldest surviving republic, on a limestone crag with three towers on the ridge.
Serbia
A confluence capital with the best nightlife in the Balkans, and monasteries frescoed eight hundred years ago.
Spain
Several countries wearing one flag, with the second-highest average altitude in Europe.
Where we would actually send you
Quiet places in countries that are in shoulder season this month — the intersection of the two things that matter. The drawing is where those six are, on one frame. Drawn from Natural Earth 1:110m admin 0 countries, public domain.
Dilijan
A forested spa town called 'Armenian Switzerland', with two of the country's finest monasteries in the woods nearby.
Tatev
A 9th-century monastery on a cliff in the far south, reached by the world's longest reversible cable car.
Dinant
A citadel on a cliff over the Meuse, a bulbous cathedral below, and the birthplace of the saxophone.
Blagaj
A dervish monastery built against a cliff at the source of the Buna, where a river comes out of a cave at full size.
Travnik
The Ottoman viziers' capital for 150 years, under a fortress, with a coloured mosque and a spring beneath it.
Brno
Czechia's second city: student, modernist and self-deprecating, with an ossuary of 50,000 under the square.