50 Fun Facts About European Cities

Which city, known in the West as Constantinople until the 1930s, has the largest population of any in Europe?

Istanbul is home to over 15 million people, about two-thirds of them on the European side of the Bosphorus and the rest in Asia. Its Turkish name was made official in 1930.

Which Italian city is spread across 118 small islands, with canals and footbridges where streets would be?

Venice stands on tree trunks: its builders drove closely spaced alder piles through the lagoon mud into hard clay, then laid stone foundations on top.

In which Spanish city did work begin in 1882 on the Sagrada Família, the basilica designed by Antoni Gaudí?

Barcelona is where Gaudí died in 1926, struck by a tram and at first taken for a beggar. Less than a quarter of his basilica was finished at the time.

Which port city on the Mersey estuary was the birthplace of the Beatles, who formed there in 1960?

Liverpool artists have had more UK number one singles than those of any other city in the world. Its 1960s sound, with the Beatles out in front, was known as Merseybeat.

Which German city hosts Oktoberfest, the giant beer festival that actually begins in the middle of September?

Munich held the first Oktoberfest on 12 October 1810 to celebrate a royal wedding, and the festival ground was named Therese's Meadow after the bride.

Which southern Italian city, lying close to Mount Vesuvius, is the home of the pizza Margherita?

Naples is where, legend holds, the pizza maker Raffaele Esposito topped a pizza in the colours of the Italian flag for the visiting Queen Margherita in 1889.

Which walled city on the Adriatic Sea stood in for King's Landing in the TV series Game of Thrones?

Dubrovnik was once the capital of its own maritime republic, under the name Ragusa, and grew rich on sea trade. UNESCO listed its old city in 1979.

Which capital city on the Danube was created in 1873 by uniting three towns, two of which form the modern name?

Budapest joined hilly Buda and Óbuda on the western side of the river with the much larger Pest, which spreads over a flat plain on the opposite bank.

Which banking hub is the largest city in Switzerland, although the federal government sits in Bern?

Zurich has taken its turn, though: it served as the Swiss federal capital for 1839–40 and again for 1845–46.

Which capital, home to Red Square and Saint Basil's Cathedral, is the most populous city entirely within Europe?

Moscow is also the largest city on the European continent by land area. It was first documented in 1147, and the first walls of its Kremlin went up in the 1150s.

Which port on the Elbe, the second-largest city in Germany, is where the Beatles played clubs before fame?

Hamburg has around 2,500 bridges across its rivers and canals, more than any other city in Europe.

Which English city, the second-largest in Britain, gave the world Cadbury chocolate and the band Black Sabbath?

Birmingham is where John Cadbury, a Quaker, began selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate from a shop in Bull Street in 1824.

Which Mediterranean port, France's second most populous city, was founded by Greek settlers around 600 BC?

Marseille is the oldest city in France, and it gave the national anthem its name: volunteers from the city sang the song on their march north in 1792.

Which city, Italy's second-largest, is home to La Scala opera house and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper?

Milan keeps the mural where Leonardo painted it in the 1490s: on the end wall of a convent dining hall at Santa Maria delle Grazie.

Which city, the second-largest in Russia, was known as Leningrad for most of the 20th century?

St Petersburg is the world's northernmost city of more than a million people. It took the name Leningrad in 1924 and voted to drop it in a 1991 referendum.

Which city, the second-largest in Poland, served as the official Polish capital until 1596?

Kraków saw its Old Town become one of the very first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978, the same year its archbishop was elected Pope John Paul II.

Which city, the second-largest in the Netherlands, is home to the largest seaport in Europe?

Rotterdam was bombed by Germany on 14 May 1940, and under the threat of raids on more cities the Dutch army capitulated the next day.

Which capital opened the world's first underground railway in 1863, with steam trains and gas-lit carriages?

London ran its first underground trains between Paddington and Farringdon, in wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives.

Which city, the most populous in the European Union, became the capital of a reunified country in 1990?

Berlin is unusually green for its size: about a third of the city's area is made up of forests, parks and gardens, rivers, canals and lakes.

Which capital is divided into twenty arrondissements that spiral out from the centre like a snail shell?

Paris numbers its arrondissements in a clockwise spiral that starts in the middle of the city, with the first on the Right Bank of the Seine.

Which Italian city, built on seven hills, has an entire independent country inside its municipal boundaries?

Rome contains Vatican City, the smallest country in the world and the only existing example of a country within a city.

Which Tuscan city, ruled for generations by the Medici family, is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance?

Florence also spent six years as the capital of the newly united Kingdom of Italy, from 1865 to 1871.

Which capital, the second-largest city in the European Union, has a bear and a strawberry tree on its coat of arms?

Madrid stands about 650 metres above sea level, which makes it the second-highest capital in Europe after little Andorra la Vella.

Which capital has more than 100 km of canals, including a 17th-century ring of three that UNESCO listed in 2010?

Amsterdam is the official capital of the Netherlands but not its seat of government: the main institutions and the foreign embassies are in The Hague.

Which capital, nicknamed the City of a Hundred Spires, has an astronomical clock dating back to 1410?

Prague owes the nickname to a count by the 19th-century mathematician Bernard Bolzano; a modern estimate puts the number of spires nearer 500.

Which Atlantic port city on the Tagus was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake on All Saints' Day 1755?

Lisbon was struck at about 9:40 on the morning of 1 November, and the fires and tsunami that followed finished what the shaking began.

Which Scandinavian capital stretches across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea?

Stockholm began on the central island that is its Old Town, Gamla Stan, which was built up from the middle of the 13th century.

Which Scottish city, with a castle perched on a volcanic plug, hosts the Fringe arts festival every August?

Edinburgh has held the Fringe since 1947, when it began as an unofficial offshoot of the International Festival. It is the world's largest performing arts festival.

Which city on the River Clyde, once the world centre of shipbuilding, is the most populous in Scotland?

Glasgow had to engineer its way to that title: the Clyde was dredged and deepened before seagoing ships could reach the city at all.

Which German city on the Rhine has a twin-spired cathedral that was begun in 1248 and finished only in 1880?

Cologne also gave perfume a name: in 1709 Johann Maria Farina mixed a light scent there and called it Eau de Cologne in honour of his new hometown.

Which French city, where the Rhône meets the Saône, is where the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph?

Lyon is the third-largest city in France and was long a centre of silk weaving. Its old quarters are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Which Andalusian city holds the tomb of Christopher Columbus inside the largest Gothic cathedral in the world?

Seville finished its cathedral in the early 16th century and took the title of the world's largest from Hagia Sophia, which had held it for a thousand years.

Which Portuguese city on the Douro estuary gave its name to a fortified wine shipped from cellars across the river?

Porto may have named the whole country too: its old Celtic-Latin name, Portus Cale, has been put forward as the origin of the word Portugal.

Which English city, dubbed Cottonopolis in the Victorian era, is regarded as the world's first industrialised city?

Manchester went on to build the Manchester Baby in 1948, the first electronic stored-program computer; a replica stands in its Science and Industry Museum.

Which German city, the birthplace of the writer Goethe, is the seat of the European Central Bank?

Frankfurt is one of the four institutional seats of the European Union, and Germany's own central bank, the Bundesbank, has its headquarters there as well.

Which Belgian city of canals, the capital of West Flanders, housed a trading post of the Hanseatic League?

Bruges opened its Bourse in 1309, most likely the first stock exchange in the world, and it grew into the most sophisticated money market in the Low Countries.

Which port on the river Scheldt, the most populous municipality in Belgium, is the hub of the world's diamond trade?

Antwerp, legend says, was once plagued by a giant called Druon Antigoon, who lived beside the river and extracted a toll from every passing boatman.

Which Italian city has the oldest university in continuous operation in the world, where teaching began around 1088?

Bologna's university carries the motto Alma Mater Studiorum, Latin for 'nourishing mother of studies', and was the first institution to award degrees.

Which city on the Rhine, facing Germany across the river, is the official seat of the European Parliament?

Strasbourg looks across the water to the German town of Kehl, and its port is the second-largest on the Rhine after Duisburg.

Geneva has been home since 1863 to which humanitarian organisation, a three-time winner of the Nobel Peace Prize?

The Red Cross grew out of Henry Dunant's book about the wounded he saw after the Battle of Solferino in 1859. Its emblem reverses the colours of the Swiss flag.

Which city, the second-largest in Bulgaria, was once named Philippopolis after the father of Alexander the Great?

Plovdiv is often called one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in Europe, with evidence of people living on the site since about 6000 BC.

In which city, the second-largest in the Czech Republic, did the monk Gregor Mendel run his pea-plant experiments?

Brno was where Mendel worked out the rules of heredity in an abbey garden in the 1850s and 1860s, though his findings went unrecognised in his lifetime.

Which city, the second-largest in Austria, lies just east of the village where Arnold Schwarzenegger was born?

Graz is the capital of Styria, and the fortress on its Schlossberg hill was one of only two strongholds in the region that never fell to the Ottoman Turks.

Which port on the eastern shore of the Jutland peninsula is the second-largest city in Denmark?

Aarhus began in the late 8th century as a harbour settlement at a river mouth, and in 1928 it became home to the first university in Jutland.

Which port on Kola Bay is the largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle?

Murmansk was the last city founded in the Russian Empire, built during the First World War where a railway could reach an ice-free harbour for Allied supplies.

Which Bosnian city is famed for a 16th-century Ottoman bridge that was destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt in 2004?

Mostar is named after the mostari, the bridge keepers who guarded the crossing over the Neretva in Ottoman times.

Which city in the Champagne wine region was the traditional site of the coronation of the kings of France?

Reims owed the honour to a baptism: its bishop Remigius baptised Clovis, king of the Franks, there around the year 500, and later kings were anointed in the same city.

Which Roman emperor built the retirement palace that forms about half of the old town of Split in Croatia?

Diocletian ordered the heavily fortified compound near his hometown and retired to it in AD 305; shops, cafes and homes fill the palace walls.

Which German city on the Neckar river is home to the oldest university in Germany, founded in 1386?

Heidelberg is a student town to its core: roughly a quarter of its residents are students, and tourists come for the castle above the Baroque old town.

In which western Romanian city did the 1989 revolution that toppled Nicolae Ceaușescu begin?

Timișoara rose up in mid-December 1989 after the government tried to evict a Hungarian Reformed pastor, László Tőkés, and the protests spread across Romania.