50 Fun Facts About Enclaves and Exclaves

Which mountain kingdom in southern Africa is an enclave completely surrounded by South Africa?

Lesotho is the largest of the world's three sovereign enclaves. It is also the only independent state lying entirely above 1,000 metres in elevation.

Which country, the smallest in the world by area, is an enclave lying entirely within Rome?

Vatican City became an independent state through the 1929 Lateran Treaty, which Mussolini signed for Italy. Italy surrounds it on every side.

Which tiny republic on Monte Titano, an enclave inside Italy, claims to have been founded in AD 301?

San Marino takes its name from Saint Marinus, a stonemason said to have built a chapel on the mountain. It claims to be the oldest surviving republic.

Which US state, cut off from the other mainland states by Canada, is the world's largest semi-exclave?

Alaska is called a semi-exclave rather than a full exclave because its long coastline gives it open access to the sea. It is bigger than Texas, California and Montana combined.

Which Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea is wedged between Poland and Lithuania?

Kaliningrad was founded by the Teutonic Order in 1255 as the city of Königsberg. Its sea coast makes the region a semi-exclave in strict terms.

Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty, is an exclave of New York inside the waters of which state?

New Jersey's waters surround the island, but an 1834 compact between the two states kept it as New York territory. Nearby Ellis Island was covered by the same exception.

Which Cold War enclave of the Western Allies was entirely surrounded by communist East Germany until 1990?

West Berlin was widely known in the West as an island of freedom. Its three Western sectors formed an enclave from 1948 until German reunification.

Baarle-Hertog is a town made of 22 exclaves scattered inside the Netherlands; which country owns them?

Belgium owns the 22 pieces, and the Dutch in turn hold seven counter-enclaves inside them. In the First World War the German army could not reach them without crossing neutral soil.

Spain's exclave cities Ceuta and Melilla, on the African coast, share land borders with which country?

Morocco shares a land border of just 6.4 km with Ceuta. Spain governs both places as autonomous cities, and both count as territory of the European Union.

Which microstate is a semi-enclave, bordered by France on three sides and the Mediterranean on the fourth?

Monaco is the most densely populated country in the world. Its strip of coast is why geographers call it a semi-enclave instead of a true enclave.

Which country, the smallest on mainland Africa, is surrounded by Senegal except for a short Atlantic coast?

The Gambia is a ribbon of land along both banks of the lower Gambia River. Its ocean coast makes it a semi-enclave, not a true enclave.

Which small Southeast Asian country is split in two by Malaysia's Limbang district, leaving Temburong as an exclave?

Brunei was cut in two in 1890, when the White Rajahs of Sarawak seized the land around the Limbang River. Its eastern district has been an exclave ever since.

Until a 2015 land swap, India had more than 100 enclaves scattered inside which other country?

Bangladesh and India exchanged 162 enclaves at midnight on 31 July 2015. One of them, Dahala Khagrabari, was the world's only enclave inside an enclave inside an enclave.

Which walled Adriatic city lies in a semi-exclave beyond Bosnia's short coast, bypassed by a bridge since 2022?

Dubrovnik lies beyond the strip of coast around Neum, Bosnia and Herzegovina's only outlet to the sea. The Pelješac Bridge now bypasses it without a single border crossing.

In Baarle, where the border runs through buildings, what feature decides which country a house's address is in?

Its front door settles the matter under the town's voordeurregel, or front door rule. One house has its door exactly on the line, so it carries a house number from each country.

The word enclave comes through French from the Latin word clavis, which names what everyday object?

Key is the root idea: Vulgar Latin inclavare meant to shut in, and enclave began as a legal term for a plot of land enclosed by someone else's property.

In human geography, a district such as a Chinatown, home to one immigrant community, is what kind of enclave?

Ethnic enclaves combine a high concentration of one group with a distinct cultural identity and economic activity of their own, so the word covers far more than borders.

The Australian Capital Territory, home to Canberra, is an enclave entirely surrounded by which state?

New South Wales gave up the land in 1911, under a constitutional rule that the federal capital must lie at least 100 miles from Sydney.

The Kowloon Walled City, an ungoverned Chinese enclave until the 1990s, stood inside which colonial territory?

Hong Kong enclosed the old Chinese fort from 1898, and by 1987 about 33,000 people were packed into its 2.6 hectares. A park now covers the site.

Which small kingdom is almost an enclave of South Africa, except for its eastern border with Mozambique?

Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, has two neighbours, which makes it landlocked but not an enclave. A true enclave is surrounded by just one other state.

Which oil-rich exclave of Angola is cut off from the rest of the country by a narrow strip of DR Congo?

Cabinda sits beside some of the largest offshore oil fields in the world, and petroleum accounts for most of what the province produces.

Which landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan lies on the far side of Armenia from the rest of the country?

Nakhchivan touches three countries, so it is an exclave but not an enclave. An enclave has the same single neighbour on every side.

Which coastal exclave of East Timor is surrounded on its land side by Indonesian West Timor?

Oecusse faces the Savu Sea to the north and is hemmed in by Indonesia on every other side. East Timor runs it as the country's only Special Administrative Region.

Which Spanish town in the Pyrenees is entirely surrounded by France because a 1659 treaty ceded only villages?

Llívia counted as a town, the ancient capital of Cerdanya, so the Treaty of the Pyrenees left it Spanish while the villages around it went to France.

Which German village on the Rhine is entirely surrounded by Switzerland and belongs to the Swiss customs area?

Büsingen has shared a customs union with Switzerland since 1947. The treaty that made it official also handed another German exclave of just three houses to the Swiss.

Campione d'Italia, an Italian exclave surrounded by Swiss territory, sits on the shore of which lake?

Lake Lugano leaves Campione less than a kilometre from the rest of Italy, yet the mountains force a drive of over 14 km through Switzerland to reach the nearest Italian town.

Five small exclaves of Germany are cut off by the Vennbahn, a strip of foreign land that was built as what?

A railway line built partly on what was then German soil, the Vennbahn changed hands under the Treaty of Versailles, trackbed and all. Its route is now a cycle way.

Which Washington state community, lying south of the 49th parallel, can be reached by land only through Canada?

Point Roberts sits on the tip of the Tsawwassen peninsula, which the 1846 Oregon Treaty sliced off when it drew the border along a line of latitude.

The Northwest Angle, the only part of the contiguous US north of the 49th parallel, belongs to which state?

Minnesota's Angle is cut off by the Lake of the Woods, so its only land border is with the Canadian province of Manitoba.

A river loop leaves a small exclave of which US state encircled by Tennessee and Missouri?

Kentucky kept the bend because surveyors had only estimated where the state line would meet the river. The only highway in runs through Tennessee, and locals call the place Bubbleland.

Carter Lake, stranded west of the Missouri River by an 1877 flood and now beside Omaha, belongs to which state?

Iowa won the town in an 1892 Supreme Court ruling after long litigation with Nebraska. It remains the only city in the state on the far bank of the river.

Which Omani exclave juts into the Strait of Hormuz, separated from the rest of Oman by the United Arab Emirates?

Musandam's peninsula guards the narrow entry to the Persian Gulf. The governorate also includes a second, smaller exclave that lies wholly inside the UAE.

Which Omani enclave inside the United Arab Emirates itself contains Nahwa, a village that belongs to the UAE?

Madha wraps around Nahwa, making the village a counter-enclave: a piece of one country inside a piece of another, inside the first. No border barrier separates the three.

By popular legend, the Cooch Behar enclaves began as stakes two rival kings wagered at cards or which board game?

Chess or cards between the Raja of Koch Bihar and the Maharaja of Rangpur is the popular tale. Records point instead to the muddled outcome of a 1713 treaty with the Mughal Empire.

Jungholz, a village reachable only via Germany, joins the rest of which country at a single mountain summit?

Austria meets Jungholz only at the 1,636-metre summit of the Sorgschrofen, where four border lines run out from one point.

Dhekelia, a British base area that completely surrounds two enclave villages, lies on which Mediterranean island?

Cyprus kept the villages of Xylotympou and Ormideia when the base areas were created at independence in 1960. Part of the republic's Dhekelia power station forms a third enclave inside the base.

Which German province became an exclave after World War I, cut off from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor?

East Prussia was isolated by the Treaty of Versailles, which gave the new Polish republic the corridor as its access to the sea.

Which Atlantic port stayed an exclave of South Africa for four years after Namibia became independent in 1990?

Walvis Bay has the only natural deep-water harbour on the Namibian coast. It was formally transferred, along with the Penguin Islands, on 1 March 1994.

Dadra and Nagar Haveli, enclaves surrounded by Indian territory, were ruled until 1954 by which European power?

Portugal had held the two enclaves since the late 18th century, under an arrangement with the Maratha Empire. After 1954 they ran their own affairs until joining India in 1961.

Which Indian union territory is made up of four scattered former French enclaves, including Mahé and Yanam?

Puducherry's four districts do not touch: two are bounded by Tamil Nadu, while Yanam is enclosed by Andhra Pradesh and Mahé by Kerala.

Sokh and Vorukh, exclaves belonging to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, are both entirely surrounded by which country?

Kyrgyzstan's Batken Region encloses both. Sokh is named after a 124 km river that crosses the exclave and waters its fertile valley.

Which Canadian island, summer home of the Roosevelt family, has a road link only to the US state of Maine?

Campobello Island is joined to Lubec, Maine, by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge. Its only link to the Canadian mainland is a seasonal ferry by way of Deer Island.

Valréas, an exclave of France's Vaucluse department, is nicknamed after which former owners, who bought it in 1317?

The popes then lived in nearby Avignon, and John XXII is said to have bought Valréas because he liked its wine. The canton is still called the Enclave des Papes.

Likoma and Chizumulu islands lie inside Mozambique's waters on a great African lake but belong to which country?

Malawi was assigned the islands because British missionaries were based there when the region's borders were set. They sit only a few kilometres from the Mozambican shore.

Martín García Island lies in Uruguayan waters of the Río de la Plata but belongs to which country?

Argentina's title was settled by a 1973 agreement that reserved the island as a nature reserve. A newer islet that has since merged with it belongs to Uruguay.

What name do NATO planners give the short Polish–Lithuanian border strip beside Russia's Baltic exclave?

The Suwałki Gap takes its name from a Polish town. The strip is about 65 km long and became a strategic choke point once Poland and the Baltic states joined the alliance.

The Tomb of Suleyman Shah, a guarded plot inside Syria, is the property of which country under a 1921 treaty?

Turkey may fly its flag over the tomb under the Treaty of Ankara. Ottoman tradition holds that it houses the grandfather of Osman I, the empire's founder.

Spain's Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera was an island until the 1930s, when it was joined to Africa by what?

A sandbar 85 metres long now ties the rock to the mainland, a formation geographers call a tombolo. It forms the world's shortest single land-border segment.

Sankovo-Medvezhye, a Russian exclave inside Belarus, has stood abandoned since which nuclear disaster polluted it?

Chernobyl's 1986 fallout left the 454-hectare exclave radioactive and empty. It lies just 800 metres from the Russian border, cut off by marshes.

Which 1526 peace deal between Francis I and Charles V was the first diplomatic document to use the word enclave?

The Treaty of Madrid borrowed a word that French property law already used for a plot of land hemmed in by another owner's land.