99 Fun Facts About European Capital Cities

Which European capital is the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state?

Reykjavík. Its Old Norse name means 'bay of smoke', said to have been given by early settlers who saw steam rising from the hot springs nearby.

Which island capital is named after the commander who held off an Ottoman siege in 1565?

Valletta. Jean de Valette laid the first stone of the new fortress city in 1566, within months of the siege, but died two years later and never saw it finished.

Malta's capital was built in the 16th century by which order?

The Knights Hospitaller. Having survived the Ottoman siege of 1565, the order built the city as its fortress and ruled Malta until French forces expelled it in 1798.

Which country has no official capital, only a 'federal city' that acts as its de facto capital?

Switzerland. To avoid concentrating power, its founders named no capital; in 1848 parliament simply chose Bern, ahead of Zurich and Lucerne, as the 'federal city' where it would sit.

Bern's old town is surrounded by which river?

The Aare. The river bends around the old town's narrow peninsula on three sides, which is why the city's founder chose the spot in 1191: it was easy to defend.

The Dutch government and parliament sit in The Hague, but which city is the official capital of the Netherlands?

Amsterdam. It grew up around a dam built across the river Amstel to control flooding, and the dam gave the city its name.

Which European capital has fewer residents than the neighbouring town of Schaan, the largest in its country?

Vaduz. Liechtenstein's capital has under 6,000 people, and its reigning prince lives in the castle on the cliff above, where the national day opens each August with speeches on the lawn.

Which microstate's capital, higher even than Madrid, is the highest capital city in Europe?

Andorra la Vella. At 1,023 m in a Pyrenean valley it stands well above Madrid's 655 m, and the mountains leave Andorra with no railway and no commercial airport of its own.

Hungary's capital was formed in 1873 from two cities facing each other across the Danube and which third, older town?

Óbuda. Its name means 'Old Buda', yet when the three towns merged the new city took its name from the other two.

Which two capitals on the Danube lie closest together?

Vienna and Bratislava. Slovakia's capital sits right against the Austrian border, where three countries meet, so the two cities are only 50 to 60 km apart along the Danube.

Which Balkan city became a national capital when a breakaway province declared independence from Serbia in 2008?

Pristina. Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008, but Serbia has never accepted it, so the city's status as a national capital is still disputed.

Which is the last divided capital in Europe?

Nicosia. A UN buffer zone, in places only a few metres wide, cuts through the old town, and until crossings began opening in 2003 residents could not pass from one side to the other.

Which capital's Palace of the Parliament, begun by a communist dictator in 1984, is listed as the world's heaviest building?

Bucharest. Nicolae Ceaușescu ordered the palace, which holds some 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze, but he was overthrown in 1989, years before it was finished.

What was Sofia called in Roman times?

Serdica. The Romans named it for the Serdi, the tribe living there; the modern name, in use from the 14th century, was borrowed from the city's church of Saint Sophia.

Just outside which capital do old limestone mine tunnels hold the world's largest wine cellar, with over 1.5 million bottles?

Chișinău. Moldova's capital, long known abroad by its Russian name Kishinev, has the Mileștii Mici cellars on its doorstep, where the rock keeps the wine at a steady 12 to 14 °C all year.

Tallinn was known to most of the world by which name from the 13th century until the early 20th?

Reval. The name spread after Danish crusaders took the site in 1219, and the Estonians' own name for the town, Tallinn, is thought to mean 'Danish fort'.

Which Art Nouveau-rich Baltic capital was European Capital of Culture in 2014?

Riga. About a third of the buildings in its centre are Art Nouveau, put up in a boom between 1904 and 1914, and UNESCO rates the collection the finest in Europe.

Which capital contains Užupis, an artists' quarter that declared itself an independent republic on April Fools' Day 1997?

Vilnius. The joke has lasted: the 'republic' keeps its own constitution, currency, anthem and government, and marks its independence every 1 April.

In 1812 Russia's tsar made Helsinki the capital of Finland in place of which older city?

Turku. Alexander I wanted the capital farther from Sweden and nearer St Petersburg; Helsinki, still Helsingfors to its Swedish speakers, is officially bilingual to this day.

Which capital was called Christiania, after a Danish king, until 1925?

Oslo. Christian IV rebuilt the city after a fire in 1624 and named it for himself; two decades after Norway became independent again, the old name was restored.

Which capital spans fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic?

Stockholm. Birger Jarl is said to have founded it in the 13th century to guard the lake's outlet against raiders coming in from the sea.

Copenhagen is connected to which Swedish city by the Øresund Bridge?

Malmö. The link leaves Sweden as a bridge but ends as a tunnel: halfway across, at an artificial island, it dives under the strait to stay clear of planes using Copenhagen's airport.

Dublin stands at the mouth of which river?

The Liffey. Dublin's name comes from the Irish for 'black pool', a reference to the dark tidal water of the river at the spot where the town grew up.

Warsaw became Poland's capital in 1596 when Sigismund III moved his court from which city?

Kraków. It had been the seat of Poland's monarchs since the Middle Ages; Warsaw then served as capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the state was partitioned out of existence in 1795.

Ljubljana's city symbol, seen on its castle tower and a famous bridge, is what creature?

A dragon. In one legend Jason and the Argonauts, fleeing with the Golden Fleece, killed a monster in the marshes here, long before the Romans built their town of Emona on the site.

Which capital is home to the Museum of Broken Relationships, which displays mementoes of failed love affairs?

Zagreb. Anyone can contribute: the collection is built from objects and stories sent in by the public, and it has toured the world and opened a second home in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Which capital is nicknamed the 'Jerusalem of Europe' for its mosque, two churches and synagogue in one neighbourhood?

Sarajevo. The city that prided itself on four faiths sharing a few streets was besieged from 1992 to 1996, the longest siege of a capital in modern history.

Belgrade stands at the confluence of the Danube and which other river?

The Sava. Belgrade's fortress stands on the ridge above the meeting of the two rivers, a crossing so prized that the city fell to the Ottomans in 1521 and was fought over for centuries afterwards.

Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, was known by what name from 1946 to 1992?

Titograd. It was renamed for Yugoslavia's leader Josip Broz Tito in 1946, when it became the capital of the Montenegrin republic, and took its old name back in 1992 as Yugoslavia broke apart.

Mother Teresa came from an Albanian family, but in which present-day capital was she born in 1910?

Skopje. It was then the Ottoman town of Üsküp; at eighteen she left to join an Irish order of nuns, trained for a few months in Dublin and sailed for India.

Which capital's mayor, a former artist, had its grey communist-era apartment blocks painted in bright colours in the 2000s?

Tirana. The mayor was Edi Rama, who went on to become Albania's prime minister in 2013; the city itself dates from the early 1600s, when an Ottoman nobleman built a mosque and baths there.

Which is the southernmost capital on the European mainland?

Athens. Tradition says the city was named after the goddess Athena, but most scholars now think it was the other way round and she took her name from the city.

The 2014 and 2015 ceasefire deals for eastern Ukraine, brokered by France and Germany, are named after which capital?

Minsk. Neither deal was ever fully carried out: the first ceasefire broke down within months, and fighting went on long after the second was signed in February 2015.

Kyiv straddles both banks of which river?

The Dnieper. Legend says Kyiv was founded on its banks by four siblings and named after one of them, Kyi, though word historians call that a folk tale and the name's origin unknown.

As of 2025, which is the most populous city lying entirely in Europe?

Moscow. Istanbul has more people, nearly 16 million, but the Bosporus splits it between Europe and Asia, which leaves Moscow's 12 million-plus as the largest population wholly on the continent.

As of 2025, in which European Union capital do foreign nationals make up about 70% of residents?

Luxembourg. EU institutions and finance have drawn so many workers that Luxembourgers are a minority in their own capital, and over 200,000 more people commute into the country across its borders each working day.

Which capital forms its own officially bilingual region, an enclave entirely surrounded by Flanders?

Brussels. Flanders speaks Dutch and the city once did too, but French took over from the late 19th century and is now the majority language of the capital region.

The City of San Marino sits on the slopes of which mountain, the republic's highest point?

Monte Titano. By tradition a Christian stonemason named Marinus took refuge on the mountain in AD 301, founding what San Marino claims is the world's oldest republic.

Prague lies on which river?

The Vltava. Known in German as the Moldau, it gave its name to the best-known movement of Smetana's Má vlast, music that follows the river from its mountain springs down to Prague.

Which capital was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake, a tsunami and fires on All Saints' Day 1755?

Lisbon. Candles lit for the holy day were knocked over and fed the fires; the Marquis of Pombal then directed the rebuilding of the ruined city.

Madrid lies on which river?

The Manzanares. Madrid began as a Moorish fort on a headland above the little river, one of a chain built to shield Toledo from the Christian kingdoms to the north.

Rome is the only capital in the world that contains what within its boundaries?

An independent country. After Italy annexed Rome in 1870 the popes called themselves prisoners in the Vatican, until the Lateran Treaties of 1929 made Vatican City a sovereign state.

As of 2025, which capital has the largest population within its city limits of any city in the European Union?

Berlin. About 3.7 million people live inside its boundaries; Paris has some 13 million in its wider metropolis but only about two million within the city line.

Germany's capital was built along the banks of which river?

The Spree. The city began as two merchant settlements facing each other across the river, one of them, Cölln, on an island in midstream; in 1307 they formed a union and shared a town hall.

Under which prefect did Paris grow to twenty arrondissements in 1860?

Haussmann. Napoleon III's prefect, already cutting new boulevards through the old city, absorbed the ring of outlying townships and roughly doubled Paris in size.

Londinium, the Roman town that grew into London, was burned to the ground around AD 60 by which rebel queen?

Boudica. Her Iceni rebels razed the port little more than a decade after the Romans founded it; once she was defeated, the Romans rebuilt the town.

Istanbul is Turkey's largest city, but which city has been its capital since 1923?

Ankara. Atatürk had made the Anatolian town, then known abroad as Angora, the seat of his nationalist assembly and provisional government in 1920, three years before the republic was declared.

Yerevan traces its history to Erebuni, founded in 782 BC by a king of which ancient kingdom?

Urartu. Its king Argishti I built the fortress of Erebuni in 782 BC, which by the traditional dates makes Yerevan a generation older than Rome.

Which capital's name means 'warm place', after the hot springs where legend says a king's falcon fell?

Tbilisi. In one telling King Vakhtang, hunting there in the 5th century, lost his falcon and its prey to a scalding spring and ordered a city built on the spot.

Which Paris landmark, built for the 1889 World's Fair, was due to be dismantled after only twenty years?

The Eiffel Tower was spared in 1909 because it had proved its worth as a radio mast. In 1914 a transmitter on the tower jammed German army signals during the advance on Paris.

Legend says the Crown will fall if which birds ever leave the Tower of London, where at least six are kept?

Ravens bothered the royal astronomer so much, one legend goes, that Charles II moved the observatory to Greenwich and let the birds stay.

Frédéric Chopin was buried in Paris, but which part of him did his sister take home to a Warsaw church?

His heart, preserved in alcohol, went back to Poland in 1850 as Chopin had asked and was later sealed inside a church pillar. A 2014 inspection of the jar pointed to tuberculosis as the cause of his death.

The 'Red' in Red Square, beside the Kremlin in Russia's capital, comes from an old Russian word meaning what?

Beautiful is what 'krasnaya' meant when the square was named in the 17th century; the word only later came to mean red. Main squares in other Russian towns, such as Suzdal, share the name.

In 1618 Protestant nobles at Prague Castle helped spark the Thirty Years' War by doing what to two royal governors?

Throwing them from a window is believed to have brought the word 'defenestrate' into English. Both governors and their secretary survived the 21-metre fall, a rescue their own side credited to angels.

Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity in 1905 while working at which kind of workplace in Bern?

A patent office in Bern employed Einstein from 1902 to 1909, judging inventions such as a gravel sorter and an electric typewriter. He published four groundbreaking papers in 1905 alone.

A famous bronze fountain figure in Belgium's capital, dressed from a wardrobe of about 1,000 costumes, depicts what?

A urinating boy only about 55 cm tall, Manneken Pis is dressed up several times a week. The one on the street corner has been a replica since 1965; the original is in the city museum.

Which Dublin brewery began in 1759 when its founder signed a 9,000-year lease on an unused site at St. James's Gate?

Guinness got its home for just £45 a year under a lease signed on the last day of 1759. Founder Arthur started out there brewing ales, not the dark stout that made the name famous.

Which Copenhagen harbour statue, inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, has twice been beheaded by vandals?

The Little Mermaid lost her head in 1964 and again in 1998; the first was never recovered, so a new one had to be made. The bronze, unveiled in 1913, stands only 1.25 metres tall.

Where do the coins that visitors throw into the Trevi Fountain in Rome, some 1.4 million euros in 2016, end up?

A Catholic charity, Caritas, receives the money and spends it on its work with the poor. Taking coins from the basin is illegal, though people regularly try.

Which city on the Neva, founded by a tsar in 1703, served as Russia's capital from 1712 to 1918?

St Petersburg rose from swampy ground on the site of a Swedish fortress that Peter the Great had captured only weeks earlier. Its many waterways earned it the nickname Venice of the North.

Which city on the Rhine, Beethoven's birthplace, served as West Germany's capital from 1949 until reunification?

Bonn was picked over Frankfurt in 1949 as a merely provisional capital. The government kept its seat there until 1999, nine years after reunification.

Which northern city, home of Fiat and a famous shroud, was the first capital of unified Italy from 1861 to 1865?

Turin lost the title after only four years, when the court moved to Florence; Rome took over after the Papal States fell in 1870.

Which spa town became the seat of Marshal Pétain's collaborationist French government after the 1940 armistice?

Vichy won the role largely on logistics: it had the second-largest hotel capacity in France and a modern telephone exchange. It stayed the de facto capital of the French rump state for four years.

Philip II moved Spain's royal court to Madrid in 1561 from which city, long famous for its sword blades?

Toledo kept going on its silk industry for a while after losing the court, then slid into real decline in the 1630s. Charles V had chosen it as his residence at least 15 times.

Legend says the twins Romulus and Remus were set adrift on which river before founding Rome on its banks?

The Tiber has pushed its mouth about 3 km out to sea since Roman times, leaving the ancient port of Ostia stranded inland. It is only the third-longest river in Italy.

Tallinn, the birthplace of Skype and the ride-hailing firm Bolt, is the capital of which country?

Estonia's capital had more start-ups per head in 2012 than any other capital in Europe. Its medieval Old Town, one of the best preserved on the continent, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Which mournful music, born in Portugal's capital around the 1820s, joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2011?

Fado takes its name from the Portuguese for 'fate' and is steeped in saudade, a longing for something lost. It grew up in bohemian districts such as Alfama and Mouraria.

Whose assassination in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina in June 1914 set off the crisis that became World War I?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were shot by Gavrilo Princip, a student who was too young to be executed and was given 20 years in jail instead.

Which Nobel Prize alone is presented in Norway's capital each December, while the rest are handed out in Sweden?

Peace is the one prize Alfred Nobel's will entrusted to a Norwegian committee, five members appointed by Norway's parliament. The ceremony has been held in the City Hall since 1990.

Which Copenhagen amusement park, open since 1843, did Walt Disney draw on when he planned Disneyland?

Tivoli's founder said in 1844 that it would never be finished, a line Disney later echoed about his own park. An even older amusement park, Bakken, lies just up the coast.

Which warship, raised in 1961 after sinking on its maiden voyage in 1628, now fills a museum in Sweden's capital?

The Vasa had sailed only about 1,300 metres when she went down in the harbour. She spent 333 years on the seabed and came up with her hull largely intact.

Which Picasso painting, kept in New York until Spain was a democracy again, hangs in Madrid's Reina Sofía museum?

Guernica reached Spain in 1981, six years after Franco died, and was first shown behind bomb- and bullet-proof glass. Picasso himself had last visited the country in 1934 and never went back.

Which two leaders met at Höfði house in Iceland's capital in October 1986 for talks on scrapping nuclear weapons?

Reagan and Gorbachev saw their talks collapse at the last minute, yet the progress made there led to the 1987 treaty that scrapped intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

Which capital opened mainland Europe's first electric underground railway in 1896, a line now listed by UNESCO?

Budapest opened the line to mark a thousand years since the Magyars arrived, and the emperor himself inaugurated it. Only London had electric underground trains sooner.

Which oil-rich capital, nicknamed the City of Winds, lies 28 metres below sea level, lower than any other in the world?

Baku stands on the shore of the Caspian, whose surface is itself well below ocean level. That also makes it the largest city in the world below sea level.

Which snow-capped peak, Armenia's national symbol, looms over Yerevan from across the border in Turkey?

Mount Ararat appears on Armenia's coat of arms together with Noah's Ark, which tradition says came to rest there. Its main summit, more than 5,100 metres high, is the highest point in Turkey.

Ljubljana became a national capital only in 1991, when which country broke away from Yugoslavia?

Slovenia's capital went on to win the European Green Capital Award for 2016. Much of its inter-war centre bears the personal touch of the architect Jože Plečnik.

Legend says Berthold V, who founded Bern, named it after which animal, the first he met on a hunt?

A bear has been on Bern's seal since at least the 1220s, and the city has kept live ones for centuries. They have since moved from the old pit to an open-air enclosure nearby.

Dublin's name comes from the Middle Irish 'Dubh Linn', a mooring place for ships, which means what in English?

Black pool was a real pool on the River Poddle, on the site of today's Dublin Castle garden. The city's modern Irish name, Baile Átha Cliath, means 'town of the hurdled ford' instead.

Which ruling family of Monaco captured the Rock in 1297, when legend says its leader came disguised as a friar?

The Grimaldis came from Genoa, where the house was founded in 1160. Monaco's coat of arms recalls the ruse with two sword-wielding friars, though historians call the tale largely anecdotal.

The Royal Palace in the official capital of the Netherlands, built as a city hall, stands on 13,659 what?

Wooden piles hold up the whole building, which went up in the mid-1600s as a city hall and became a royal palace only in 1808, under Napoleonic rule.

Arsenalna in Kyiv, 105.5 metres below ground, long held the world depth record for what kind of place?

Metro station Arsenalna is so deep because it sits beneath the high river bank that rises above the rest of Kyiv. A station in Chongqing, China, has since taken its world record.

Which rocky citadel above Greece's capital holds the Parthenon, a temple blown apart by stored gunpowder in 1687?

The Acropolis got its famous temples under Pericles in the fifth century BC. The 1687 blast came when a Venetian bombardment hit gunpowder that the Turkish garrison kept inside the Parthenon.

Which 1,441-room Baroque landmark in Austria's capital was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers?

Schönbrunn Palace came to Empress Maria Theresa as a wedding gift. She had the hilltop Gloriette in its park built with masonry recycled from another, half-demolished palace.

The London landmark that houses the bell Big Ben was given which official name in 2012, for a Diamond Jubilee?

Elizabeth Tower was plain 'Clock Tower' until 2012, and Big Ben is strictly the nickname of the great bell inside. It was finished in 1859, after fire destroyed the old Palace of Westminster.

The Catacombs of Paris, holding the bones of over six million people, fill tunnels first dug as what?

Stone quarries under the city took in the dead from 1788, when covered wagons began hauling bones from overflowing cemeteries by night. Cellar walls collapsing beside one graveyard had forced the issue.

Warsaw stands on which river, the longest in Poland, which reaches the Baltic near Gdańsk?

The Vistula runs 1,047 km and is the longest river draining into the Baltic. Poles sometimes call their whole country the 'Land on the Vistula'.

Belgrade, fought over in 115 wars and razed 44 times, has a Slavic name that means what in English?

White city is the literal meaning of Beograd. The Romans knew the same strategic ridge as Singidunum, a settlement they raised to a full colony by the end of the 2nd century.

Which Gallo-Roman town on the Seine, settled earlier by the Parisii tribe, grew into the modern city of Paris?

Lutetia gave its name to lutetium, a chemical element named by a Paris scientist in 1907. Remains of the Roman town's amphitheatre and baths survive in the city.

Copenhagen lies mainly on which island, with a smaller part of the city across the bridges on Amager?

Zealand is the largest island in Denmark proper, though Greenland dwarfs it. Bridges link it to Amager and, from there, across the strait to Sweden.

Which sea fortress off Helsinki, begun under Swedish rule in 1748, was once called the 'Gibraltar of the North'?

Suomenlinna means 'Fortress of Finland', a name it took only in 1918 after 170 years as Sveaborg. For all its reputation, it surrendered to Russia in 1808 after just two months.

Which small city, Montenegro's old royal capital, houses the president's official residence, the Blue Palace?

Cetinje keeps the title of Old Royal Capital and its own lord mayor, while the government sits in Podgorica. The president's residence there is named for the colour of its walls.

Which city served as Lithuania's 'temporary capital' from 1920 to 1939, while Poland held the historic one?

Kaunas flourished in the role: the Art Deco and modernist buildings it put up in those two decades earned the city a UNESCO World Heritage listing in 2023.

The republic of San Marino traces its founding in AD 301 to Saint Marinus, who tradition says followed which trade?

Stonemason Marinus had crossed the Adriatic from the island of Rab to escape Diocletian's persecution of Christians, then withdrew up a mountain to build a chapel and live as a hermit.

Which of Rome's seven hills, where the first emperors built their homes, gave English the word 'palace'?

The Palatine is the centremost of the seven hills, and myth places on it the cave where a she-wolf found Romulus and Remus. Augustus was the first emperor to build there.

Which Peloponnese port, an early capital of modern Greece, saw the country's first head of state assassinated in 1831?

Nafplio held the role until 1834. Count Ioannis Kapodistrias, the head of state, was killed there on the steps of the church of Saint Spyridon by members of the Mavromichalis family.

Which city, nicknamed the 'First Capital', was the seat of Soviet Ukraine from 1919 until 1934?

Kharkiv was made the capital by the Bolsheviks when they set up their Ukrainian republic, which joined the Soviet Union in 1922. Kyiv took over the role only in 1934.

Sofia, long known by the Slavic name Sredets, takes its present name from what?

An early church, Saint Sofia, gave the city its name, which makes it an oddity among Bulgarian towns with their mostly Slavic names.

London's Great Fire of 1666 began shortly after midnight in a bakery on which street?

Pudding Lane lay close to the river, yet a strong wind fanned the bakery blaze into a firestorm before it could be contained. By the third day it had destroyed Old St Paul's Cathedral.