European Capitals — Complete Guide
All Western European capital cities in one place — flags, key facts, history highlights, and links to every city guide and quiz.
Paris — Capital of France
The City of Light. 2,000 years of history, the world's most visited museum, and a tower that nearly got demolished. How well do you really know Paris?
Berlin — Capital of Germany
Divided by a wall, reunited by history. Berlin has been capital of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and reunified Germany. How well do you know it?
Rome — Capital of Italy
The Eternal City. Capital of the ancient world's greatest empire, seat of the Catholic Church, and home to more UNESCO heritage than any other city. How well do you know Rome?
Madrid — Capital of Spain
Europe's highest capital city, home to the Prado and the Bernabéu. Madrid became Spain's capital only in 1561 — yet it holds one of the world's great art collections. How well do you know it?
London — Capital of the United Kingdom
Roman Londinium, Viking raids, the Black Death, the Great Fire, the Blitz — and still standing. How well do you know the city that once ruled a quarter of the world?
Lisbon — Capital of Portugal
Built on seven hills above the Tagus, Lisbon launched the Age of Discovery. Vasco da Gama sailed from here to India; the 1755 earthquake reshaped it. How well do you know Europe's westernmost capital?
Amsterdam — Capital of the Netherlands
Built on wooden piles in a peat bog, Amsterdam became the richest city in the world in the 17th century. Rembrandt, Anne Frank, the diamond trade — how well do you know the City of Canals?
Prague — Capital of the Czech Republic
The City of a Hundred Spires survived WWII almost unscathed and kept its medieval core intact. From Holy Roman Empire to communism to Velvet Revolution — how well do you know Prague?
Vienna — Capital of Austria
For 600 years the seat of the Habsburg Empire. Mozart, Beethoven, Freud, Hitler — all lived here. The Ringstrasse, the Opera, the Kunsthistorisches Museum. How well do you know the City of Music?
Athens — Capital of Greece
Democracy, philosophy, the Parthenon — Athens gave the Western world its intellectual foundations. The birthplace of Socrates, Plato, and the Olympic Games. How well do you know the cradle of civilisation?
Warsaw — Capital of Poland
Rebuilt from rubble after WWII destroyed 85% of it. Warsaw rose from the ashes to become the economic powerhouse of Central Europe. How well do you know the Phoenix City?
Budapest — Capital of Hungary
Two cities — Buda and Pest — united in 1873 across the Danube. The 'Paris of the East' gave the world the Rubik's Cube, the ballpoint pen, and some of the greatest thermal baths in Europe.
Bucharest — Capital of Romania
Once called the "Little Paris of the East" for its Belle Époque boulevards. Then Nicolae Ceaușescu demolished a quarter of the historic city to build Europe's second-largest building. How well do you know Bucharest?
Zagreb — Capital of Croatia
A city of two medieval hills merged into one capital. Zagreb punches above its weight — from Nikola Tesla's homeland to the 2018 World Cup finalists. How well do you know Croatia's capital?
Stockholm — Capital of Sweden
Built across 14 islands where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic Sea, Stockholm was once the capital of a Scandinavian empire. Home to the Nobel Prize, ABBA, and some of the world's cleanest air.
Oslo — Capital of Norway
Founded by Vikings, rebuilt after a great fire, and enriched beyond imagination by North Sea oil, Oslo hosts the Nobel Peace Prize and is one of the world's most expensive — and liveable — cities.
Copenhagen — Capital of Denmark
Home to the Little Mermaid, the world's oldest amusement park, and the most influential restaurant on Earth. Copenhagen invented New Nordic cuisine and consistently ranks among the world's most liveable cities.
Helsinki — Capital of Finland
The youngest Nordic capital, designed by a German architect on an empty granite peninsula. Finland's capital gave the world Nokia, Linux, and the sauna — and has topped global happiness rankings for years.
Brussels — Capital of Belgium
Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union and home to NATO headquarters — yet it remains most famous for waffles, chocolate, and a small bronze boy doing something undignified. Did you know the entire Grand Place was destroyed by French artillery in 1695 and rebuilt in just four years?
Dublin — Capital of Ireland
Dublin is a city where a pub landlord signed a 9,000-year lease and the most famous novel ever written is set entirely within a single day. Home to four Nobel laureates in Literature and a revolutionary uprising that changed the course of Irish history, Ireland's capital rewards those who look past the tourist shamrocks.
Bern — Capital of Switzerland
Bern is the city where Albert Einstein developed the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 — and technically it isn't even Switzerland's capital, because Switzerland officially has none. A medieval city of covered arcades, a bear legend, and one of Europe's most unusual systems of government.
Luxembourg — Capital of Luxembourg
Luxembourg City is the only remaining capital of an independent Grand Duchy in the world — a rocky fortress city once so impregnable it was called the 'Gibraltar of the North'. Today it hosts the EU Court of Justice and consistently ranks as one of the wealthiest places on Earth.
Reykjavik — Capital of Iceland
Reykjavik is the world's northernmost capital, home to the oldest parliament still in operation, and the city that gave the English language the word 'geyser'. In 1980 its country became the first in the world to democratically elect a female president — and in 1986 Reagan and Gorbachev nearly ended the Cold War here.
Valletta — Capital of Malta
Valletta is the smallest capital in the European Union by area — just 0.8 km² — but it packs in Caravaggio's largest painting, a megalithic temple older than the Egyptian pyramids, and a siege so dramatic it changed the balance of power in the entire Mediterranean. Named after a knight, built by knights, forged in battle.
Belgrade — Capital of Serbia
Belgrade sits at the confluence of two great rivers and carries 7,000 years of continuous history on its shoulders. From Roman legions to Yugoslav leaders, this city has witnessed more than most capitals ever will.
Sofia — Capital of Bulgaria
Sofia is one of Europe's oldest capitals, built on layers of Thracian, Roman, Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Ottoman civilisation. From the birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet to fields producing most of the world's rose oil, Bulgaria surprises at every turn.
Ljubljana — Capital of Slovenia
Ljubljana is one of Europe's smallest and greenest capitals, where a dragon watches over the old town from a medieval bridge and the influence of one visionary architect is visible on almost every street corner. Slovenia punched above its weight from the moment it broke free from Yugoslavia.
Sarajevo — Capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sarajevo is a city where a single gunshot in 1914 changed the course of world history, and where a brutal four-year siege in the 1990s became one of the defining tragedies of modern Europe. Yet this is also a city of extraordinary resilience — the "Jerusalem of Europe" that has long blended minarets, church spires, and synagogues within a single city block.
Skopje — Capital of North Macedonia
Skopje is a city rebuilt from rubble after a devastating 1963 earthquake, now crowned with neo-classical statues and triumphal arches that sparked one of Europe's most heated debates about national identity. It is also the birthplace of Mother Teresa — and the ground zero of the dispute over Alexander the Great.
Tirana — Capital of Albania
Tirana is the capital of a country that was once the most isolated in Europe — a communist dictatorship that banned religion, built 750,000 concrete bunkers, and broke with every major power on earth. Today its grey communist buildings are painted in vivid colours, and its story of reinvention is one of the most remarkable in modern Europe.
Podgorica — Capital of Montenegro
Podgorica is the capital of Europe's youngest independent state, a country whose name — both in Slavic and Italian — means "Black Mountain." Montenegro punched above its weight to win independence in a nail-bitingly close 2006 referendum, and today it uses the euro without being in the Eurozone.
Vilnius — Capital of Lithuania
Vilnius hides one of the largest medieval old towns in Northern Europe, a self-proclaimed artists' republic, and a Frank Zappa statue that has nothing to do with Frank Zappa. How well do you know the Baltic city that once ruled an empire stretching to the Black Sea?
Riga — Capital of Latvia
Riga holds the world's largest collection of Art Nouveau architecture, a song festival that survived Soviet occupation, and a national herbal liqueur brewed since 1752. Test your knowledge of the Baltic states' biggest and most architecturally dazzling capital.
Tallinn — Capital of Estonia
Tallinn has the best-preserved medieval old town in Northern Europe, invented e-residency, and gave the world Skype — all from a city whose name may simply mean 'Danish castle'. How much do you know about Europe's most digitally advanced medieval capital?
Kyiv — Capital of Ukraine
Kyiv is one of Eastern Europe's oldest cities — the mother of Kievan Rus, home to golden-domed cathedrals, underground cave monasteries, and the world's deepest metro station. Test your knowledge of a city whose history spans over 1,500 years and whose courage has defined an era.
Chișinău — Capital of Moldova
Chișinău is one of Europe's least-visited capitals — yet Moldova has 120 km of underground wine tunnels, a breakaway territory backed by Russia, and a poet exiled here by the tsar. How much do you know about Europe's smallest and most surprising country?
Monaco — Capital of Monaco
The second smallest country in the world has no income tax and hosts a Formula 1 race through its streets. Monaco's ruling dynasty has held power since a monk-disguised knight sneaked into a fortress in 1297.
Andorra la Vella — Capital of Andorra
Andorra la Vella is the highest capital city in Europe, perched at 1,023 metres in the Pyrenees. Its government is so unusual that the President of France is technically a co-monarch of a foreign country.
Vaduz — Capital of Liechtenstein
Vaduz is the only capital in the world whose country is doubly landlocked — surrounded entirely by landlocked countries. When Liechtenstein sent 80 soldiers to its last war in 1866, 81 came back.
Vatican City — Capital of Vatican City
At 0.44 km², Vatican City is the world's smallest sovereign state, entirely surrounded by Rome. Its Swiss Guard — in service since 1506 — remains one of the oldest active military units in the world.
San Marino — Capital of San Marino
San Marino claims to be the world's oldest republic, founded in 301 AD by a Christian stonemason fleeing persecution. Its government is run by two heads of state simultaneously — and they serve only six months each.
Nicosia — Capital of Cyprus
Nicosia is the world's last divided capital, split by a UN Buffer Zone since the Turkish military intervention of 1974. Cyprus is the only EU member state with part of its territory under military occupation by another country.
European Capitals Quiz
Do you know your Ljubljana from your Bratislava? Test your knowledge of European capital cities — from the obvious to the surprisingly tricky.
How Czech Are You?
Pivo, Kafka, hockey, and a healthy dose of skepticism — find out how much Czech DNA runs through your personality and habits.
How German Are You?
Punctuality, efficiency, Brot, and a deep love of rules — discover how much of the German mindset runs through your personality.
About the Europe Quiz Series
Europe is a continent of extraordinary diversity — 44 countries, dozens of languages, and thousands of years of shared and contested history. From the fjords of Norway to the olive groves of Greece, from Berlin's modernist energy to the medieval charm of Prague, every corner of Europe has a story worth knowing.
This series covers European geography, culture, and identity. Test your knowledge of capitals and landmarks, explore the quirks and values that define different nationalities, and discover how much of Europe you actually carry with you.