Compare 576 Travel Destinations

Norway's oil capital and the base for the country's most famous day hike — Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock), a 604m cliff over Lysefjord that tops nearly every shortlist of the world's great viewpoints. Gamle Stavanger preserves 173 white wooden 18th-century houses in cobblestone lanes; the Norwegian Petroleum Museum is unexpectedly excellent; the Nuart Festival has left world-class street art all over the centre; and Sverd i fjell's three giant swords mark the 872 battle that unified Norway.

Stockholm is built on 14 islands connected by bridges — a stunning waterfront capital where medieval Gamla Stan meets sleek Scandinavian design. The Vasa Museum is world-class, the archipelago of 30,000 islands is a summer paradise, and the food scene has evolved far beyond meatballs. Expensive but worth every krona.

Estonia's medieval Old Town has the best-preserved 14th-century walls in Northern Europe — cobblestone, guild halls, and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral staring down from Toompea. Digital-republic Estonia birthed Skype and Wise here; Telliskivi Creative City balances the medieval with craft cocktails. 2-hour ferry across to Helsinki.

The Hague is the Netherlands' political capital, the seat of parliament, and home to the International Court of Justice at the Peace Palace. The 13th-century Binnenhof courtyard sits at the city's core, the Mauritshuis around the corner holds Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Fabritius's Goldfinch, and Madurodam shrinks the entire country into a one-twenty-fifth scale model park. A short tram ride later you are on Scheveningen beach with the pier and a North Sea promenade. Less postcard than Amsterdam, more institutional, with serious museums and easy access to the coast.

Greece's vibrant second city has a legendary food scene, Byzantine churches, Ottoman-era markets, and a stunning waterfront promenade. More laid-back than Athens with excellent nightlife and easy access to Halkidiki beaches and Mount Olympus.

Albania's capital spent 45 years as Europe's most isolated country (1944–1992); today Tirana is one of the continent's most energetic up-and-coming cities. Former mayor Edi Rama — now Prime Minister — painted communist-era grey apartment blocks in psychedelic colors, transforming the city's identity. Bunk'Art 1 and 2 repurpose Hoxha's nuclear bunkers (there were 750,000 — one per four Albanians) as extraordinary art museums. Blloku, once the exclusive communist party quarter, is now packed with cafes and bars. Ridiculously affordable.

Toledo sits on a granite hill nearly encircled by a hairpin bend of the Tagus — the entire walled old city is UNESCO-listed and looks essentially as El Greco painted it in 1600. For five centuries it was Spain's capital and the meeting point of three faiths: the Gothic cathedral (one of the great cathedrals of Christendom) stands a few minutes' walk from the Sinagoga del Tránsito and the converted-mosque Cristo de la Luz. Marzipan workshops, Damascene-steel sword-makers, and El Greco's restored house round it out. The AVE high-speed train from Madrid Atocha takes 33 minutes — making Toledo the easiest serious day trip in Spain, though staying overnight is the way to see it without the day-tripper rush.

The "Gateway to the Arctic" — Norway's largest city above the Arctic Circle sits on an island connected by the iconic Tromsø Bridge. Sitting directly under the auroral oval gives it roughly 240 aurora-visible nights a year; Fjellheisen cable car, the Arctic Cathedral, Polar Museum, and Mack Brewery (the world's northernmost) define the city. Surprisingly mild winters (−5°C average) thanks to the North Atlantic Current — dog sledding at Camp Tamok and Sami reindeer experiences round out the Arctic week.

Utrecht is the Netherlands without the Amsterdam crowds, plus a quirky architectural feature you will not see in any other Dutch city: the medieval canals run a level below the street, and the old wharves (werfkelders) along the Oudegracht are now packed with restaurants and bars at water level. The 112-metre Domtoren is the tallest church tower in the country, the DOMunder tour walks you through 2,000 years of buried Roman and medieval foundations, and the compact medieval center is built for bikes and slow afternoons. Twenty-seven minutes by Intercity train from Amsterdam.

Spain's third-largest city sits on the Mediterranean coast 350 km southeast of Madrid — the birthplace of paella (originated in the rice paddies and orange groves of the Albufera lagoon south of the city), home to Santiago Calatrava's futuristic City of Arts and Sciences (Europe's largest cultural-architectural complex), and built around the 9 km Turia Gardens — a linear park created in the diverted riverbed after the 1957 flood. Add Las Fallas (the UNESCO Intangible Heritage festival of 700+ giant satirical papier-mâché monuments burned in March), the medieval El Carmen quarter, the modernista Mercado Central (Europe's largest fresh-produce market), the Holy Grail in the cathedral, and a wide urban beach reachable by tram — and Valencia delivers more variety per square mile than any other major Spanish city.

Built by the Knights of St. John after the Great Siege of 1565 — UNESCO 1980, one of Europe's smallest capital cities (0.8 km²) and European Capital of Culture 2018. St. John's Co-Cathedral holds Caravaggio's Beheading of St. John masterpiece; Upper Barrakka Gardens fire the saluting battery daily at noon and 4pm; the Grand Harbour is ringed by the Three Cities (Vittoriosa, Senglea, Cospicua) older than Valletta itself. Mdina — Malta's "silent city" — is a 30-minute bus away. Schengen EUR, 90-day visa-free entry for most Western passports (ETIAS from 2026).

The medieval capital of Bulgaria from 1185 to 1393 — a tiered amphitheatre of red-roofed houses stacked across the cliffs above a horseshoe bend of the Yantra River. Tsarevets Fortress rises from its own peninsula on the eastern hill, its restored ramparts and Patriarchal Cathedral hosting a son et lumiere show on summer nights that floods the rock in coloured light. Samovodska Charshia is the restored craft street of woodcarvers and coppersmiths in the Old Town below. Three hours by train from Sofia, this is the traditional gateway to Bulgarian rural tourism in the Balkan range.

118 islands stitched together by 400 bridges across a saltwater lagoon — a thousand years of maritime republic concentrated into 7.6 km² that have no cars and never will. St Mark's Basilica's gold mosaics under five Byzantine domes, the Doge's Palace and Bridge of Sighs, the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal's S-curve, Burano's painted houses and Murano's glass furnaces in the lagoon, and the gondola routes that have run essentially unchanged for 400 years. UNESCO-listed in its entirety; under serious pressure from 25 million annual visitors and Acqua Alta floods, with a €5 day-tripper fee in effect peak summer.

A UNESCO city of 2,000 years of continuous urbanism in a single Adige river bend — the third-largest surviving Roman amphitheatre still hosting the world’s biggest open-air opera season, the Casa di Giulietta balcony where Shakespeare’s romance lives in collective imagination, Castelvecchio’s Carlo Scarpa-restored Scaligeri fortress, the marble-paved Piazza delle Erbe market square, and the Valpolicella wine region in the eastern hills. The smartest base in the Veneto for visiting Lake Garda, Venice, and the Palladian villas.

Vienna is the city of music, imperial grandeur, and coffeehouse culture. The former heart of the Habsburg Empire impresses with its Baroque palaces, world-class museums, and a cultural scene that rivals any European capital. Classical concerts, Sachertorte, and wine taverns in the Vienna Woods — it's refined without being stuffy.

Iceland's southernmost village — 750 people clinging to the foot of Mýrdalsjökull glacier, with the black-sand crescent of Reynisfjara and the Reynisdrangar sea stacks two minutes' drive west. The red-roofed clifftop church above town is one of the country's most photographed landmarks. Vík is the practical base for the South Coast circuit (Seljalandsfoss, Skógafoss, Sólheimajökull, Dyrhólaey), 187 km / 2.5 hours from Reykjavík on the Ring Road.

Lithuania's capital has the largest Baroque Old Town in Eastern Europe (UNESCO, 70+ churches), but its most singular feature is Užupis — a self-declared breakaway republic that announced independence on April Fool's Day 1989, has its own "president," and has posted its Constitution in 23 languages on a wall. Gediminas' Tower overlooks the city from a hill that's also the end of the 1989 Baltic Way human chain (675 km of people holding hands from Tallinn to Vilnius). One of Europe's most underrated capitals.

A city rebuilt from 85% destruction — Warsaw's Old Town was reconstructed brick-by-brick from 18th-century Bellotto paintings, earning a UNESCO inscription for the act of reconstruction itself. POLIN Museum of Polish Jews (European Museum of the Year), the Warsaw Rising Museum, Łazienki Park's free Sunday Chopin concerts, the Palace of Culture and Science (Stalin's polarising "gift"), and the Neon Museum's communist-era glow: the most historically layered capital in Central Europe.

York is England's medieval time capsule — a walled city in North Yorkshire where Roman ramparts, Viking street names, and a Gothic minster the size of a small mountain coexist inside a 3.4 km loop you can walk in two hours. York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe; the Shambles (15th-century overhanging timber-frame butchers' lane) was J.K. Rowling's reference for Diagon Alley; the Jorvik Viking Centre sits over the actual 10th-century Viking dig at Coppergate. It's a 2-hour direct LNER train from London King's Cross and the most visited UK city outside London.

A walled peninsula on Croatia's central Dalmatian coast, halfway between Split and Pula, where Roman ruins meet 21st-century sound art. The Sea Organ — Nikola Bašić's wave-powered installation of 35 underwater pipes built in 2005 — moans and chords with every passing swell along the western promenade, while the adjacent Greeting to the Sun lights up at dusk from 300 sun-charged glass plates set into the quay. Inland sits the 9th-century rotunda of St Donatus on the Roman Forum. Zadar is also the practical gateway to Kornati Islands National Park and Plitvice Lakes, both an easy day trip away.

Croatia's inland capital — overlooked by visitors who fly straight to Split or Dubrovnik, but the city Croatians themselves rate above the coastal scrum. Medieval Upper Town (Gornji Grad) sits on the hill: cobbled lanes, the colourful tile roof of St. Mark's, the Stone Gate chapel where Zagrebčani still light candles. Below, the 19th-century Lower Town (Donji Grad) holds Austro-Hungarian boulevards, museums (including the world's only Museum of Broken Relationships), and Tkalčićeva — the densest café-and-bar strip in Croatia. Add the award-winning Advent Christmas market (best in Europe three years running) and you get the surprise of a Habsburg-era capital at half the price of Vienna.

Car-free Alpine village of 5,800 residents pinned beneath the 4,478 m Matterhorn — the most photographed mountain in Switzerland and arguably the world. The 1898 Gornergrat cog railway climbs to 3,089 m for the classic frontal Matterhorn view, and the Klein Matterhorn cable car tops out at 3,883 m, the highest cable-car station in Europe. Only electric taxis are allowed in town; everyone arrives by train through Visp. Year-round skiing on the Theodul Glacier and 400 km of summer hiking trails make this Switzerland's signature mountain resort.

Switzerland's largest city — banking capital, Lake Zürich anchor, and (consistently) one of the world's two or three highest-quality-of-life cities. Altstadt's medieval lanes climb to the twin towers of the Grossmünster (where Zwingli launched the Swiss Reformation in 1519); Bahnhofstrasse runs from the Hauptbahnhof to the lake; the Kunsthaus holds Switzerland's finest art collection. The Uetliberg's panorama trail and the lake's swim baths (Frauenbad, Männerbad, Seebad Enge) are the locals' summer rituals. Expensive — but the trains run on the dot.