The European year
July in Europe
28 recurring fixtures, 30 countries at their best and 9 in the quieter shoulder — which is usually where you should be going.
On in July
Vardavar, when everyone throws water at everyone
Nationwide
Salzburg Festival
Salzburg
Kupalle, midsummer fire and water rites
Rural regions
Slavianski Bazaar
Vitebsk
Ommegang procession
Brussels
Mostar Old Bridge diving competition
Mostar
Baščaršija Nights
Sarajevo
Dubrovnik Summer Festival
Dubrovnik
Copenhagen Jazz Festival
Copenhagen
Laulupidu, the song festival — 30,000 singers, every five years
Tallinn
Savonlinna Opera Festival, in a medieval castle
Savonlinna
Bastille Day
Nationwide
Galway International Arts Festival
Galway
Palio di Siena
Siena
Prishtina International Film Festival
Pristina
Song and Dance Celebration — every five years, tens of thousands of singers
Riga
Song Celebration, every four years
Vilnius
Village festas with fireworks, all summer
Every parish
Ohrid Summer Festival
Ohrid
Galičnik wedding, a village wedding staged as a festival
Galičnik
Sighișoara Medieval Festival
Sighișoara
Medieval Days
City of San Marino
EXIT festival, in a Habsburg fortress
Novi Sad
Východná folklore festival
Východná
Ljubljana Festival
Ljubljana
San Fermín
Pamplona
Montreux Jazz Festival
Montreux
Ivana Kupala, midsummer fire and water rites
Rural regions
At their best in July
Peak season: the weather works, everything is open, and so is everyone else's calendar.
Albania
Closed to the world until 1991, and now the least developed and least expensive coast on the Mediterranean.
Andorra
A Pyrenean co-principality with two heads of state, no airport, and the highest capital in Europe.
Austria
An imperial capital with a small country attached, most of it vertical.
Belgium
Three languages, six governments, the best beer in the world and a genuine talent for not explaining itself.
Bulgaria
Thracian gold, Orthodox monasteries, rose fields and the cheapest good skiing in Europe.
Croatia
A thousand islands, a Roman emperor's palace still lived in, and lakes that fall into each other.
Czechia
The most beautiful city in central Europe, and a country that drinks more beer per head than any other.
Denmark
Small, flat, bicycled, and disproportionately good at deciding how things should look.
Estonia
A medieval hanseatic capital run by the most digital state in Europe.
Finland
Forest, lake, sauna, silence — and a design tradition that came out of all four.
France
The most visited country on earth, and still mostly empty fifty kilometres from anywhere famous.
Germany
Sixteen states that were separate countries within living memory, and still behave like it.
Greece
Six thousand islands, of which two hundred and twenty-seven are inhabited, and a mainland almost nobody visits.
Hungary
A thermal-water capital on the Danube, a language related to almost nothing, and sweet wine that outlived empires.
Iceland
A geological work in progress, with a literary tradition older than most European states.
Ireland
A small wet island that exported its writers, its music and a third of its people, and kept the landscape.
Latvia
The largest collection of Art Nouveau in Europe, on the edge of a great pine forest.
Liechtenstein
Twenty-five kilometres long, ruled from a castle on the hill, and walkable end to end in a day.
Lithuania
A baroque capital, a sand spit shared with Russia, and a hill of a hundred thousand crosses.
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.
Montenegro
A drowned river canyon that looks like a fjord, with black mountains straight up behind it.
Netherlands
A country built on purpose, mostly below sea level, and cycled end to end.
Norway
A country shaped by water that had somewhere to be.
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.
Slovenia
Alps, karst caves, vineyards and 46 kilometres of coast, all within two hours of each other.
Sweden
An archipelago capital, a thousand miles of forest, and a country that would rather you were comfortable than impressed.
Switzerland
The most expensive country in Europe and the one that most reliably justifies it.
United Kingdom
Four nations, one small island group, and an argument about all of it that has run for a thousand years.
Quieter, and often better, in July
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.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Where the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian worlds meet in one street, and the 1990s are still within touching distance.
Georgia
Eight thousand years of winemaking, its own alphabet, and mountains higher than the Alps.
Kosovo
Europe's youngest country by both age and population, with medieval monasteries and a mountain trail into two neighbours.
Moldova
The world's largest wine cellar, measured in kilometres, under one of Europe's least visited countries.
North Macedonia
One of the oldest lakes on earth, a bazaar that never stopped trading, and a capital that rebuilt itself in marble.
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.
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.
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.
Mestia, Svaneti
A mountain region of defensive stone towers built by families against each other, under 5,000-metre peaks.
Sighnaghi & Kakheti
A walled hill town over the Alazani valley, with the Caucasus on the horizon and vineyards to the foot of them.