The European year
June in Europe
20 recurring fixtures, 43 countries at their best and 3 in the quieter shoulder — which is usually where you should be going.
On in June
Sant Joan bonfires
Nationwide
Rose Festival
Kazanlak
Kataklysmos, the flood festival, with water thrown at everyone
Coastal towns
Roskilde Festival
Roskilde
Jaanipäev, midsummer bonfires
Nationwide
Juhannus (midsummer)
Lakeside, nationwide
Fête de la Musique — free music on every street
Nationwide
Athens & Epidaurus Festival, in ancient theatres
Athens and Epidaurus
Secret Solstice and the near-endless June light
Reykjavík
Jāņi, midsummer with wreaths and cheese
Nationwide
Joninės, midsummer on the coast
Nationwide
Midnight sun period
Everywhere north of the Arctic Circle
Wianki, midsummer wreaths on the Vistula
Kraków
Santos Populares — sardines, basil and street parties
Lisbon and Porto
Festa de São João, with hammers and bonfires
Porto
White Nights
St Petersburg
Midsummer
Everywhere, especially the countryside
Istanbul Music Festival
Istanbul
Glastonbury Festival
Somerset
Feast of Saints Peter and Paul
St Peter's Basilica
At their best in June
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.
Armenia
The first state to adopt Christianity, in 301, with monasteries in gorges and a mountain it can see but not reach.
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.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Where the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian worlds meet in one street, and the 1990s are still within touching distance.
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.
Cyprus
The last divided capital in Europe, on an island of Byzantine churches and mountain wine.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
North Macedonia
One of the oldest lakes on earth, a bazaar that never stopped trading, and a capital that rebuilt itself in marble.
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.
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.
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.
Spain
Several countries wearing one flag, with the second-highest average altitude in Europe.
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 June
Shoulder season. The Journey Planner scores these upward rather than downward for exactly this month.
Andorra
A Pyrenean co-principality with two heads of state, no airport, and the highest capital in Europe.
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.
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.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror
A glacial valley with no road into it, on the UNESCO list for a cultural landscape of summer pasture and stone huts.
Sheki
A silk road town under wooded mountains, with a khan's summer palace whose windows are built without glue or nails.
Xınalıq
A village at 2,300 metres whose people speak a language related to nothing else, reached by a single mountain road.
Edirne
The Ottoman capital before Istanbul, in the European corner, with Sinan's masterpiece mosque in it.