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Capital cities in Europe

  • BernBern is Switzerland's seat of government, but its constitution refuses to call it the capital.
  • LisbonLisbon is older than every modern European capital except Athens. Phoenician traders used its harbor.
  • VilniusGrand Duke Gediminas dreamed of an Iron Wolf, and by legend built Vilnius. The legend was recorded around the 1530s.
  • BucharestIn Bucharest, Ceaușescu razed monasteries, churches and a hospital to build a giant palace.
  • ViennaVienna's socialist city government built over 60,000 apartments between 1925 and 1934.
  • BelgradeCatholic churches still ring noon bells because of a battle at Belgrade in 1456.
  • ReykjavíkIngólfr Arnarson threw his high seat pillars overboard to choose where Reykjavík would rise.
  • AthensIn 1687, a shot ignited gunpowder stored inside the Parthenon in Athens.
  • WarsawAbout 85 percent of Warsaw's buildings were razed by German squads. Today it is the capital of Poland.
  • BerlinBerlin, the capital of Germany, may carry a word for swamp in its very name. The city lies in the northeast of the country, in land once settled by Slavs. Its name appears to be rooted in the language of the West Slavs and may be related…
  • MoscowIn 1712, Peter the Great moved Russia's government out of Moscow. Lenin brought the capital back in 1918.
  • LondonQueen Boudica's Iceni tribe burnt Roman London to the ground around AD 61. The city was rebuilt and prospered.
  • ParisParis has twenty districts that spiral clockwise because Napoleon III annexed nearby towns in 1860.
  • PragueIn 1618, Prague's second defenestration ignited the Thirty Years' War. Prague's population fell from 60,000 to 20,000.
  • StockholmIn 1520, union monarch Christian II oversaw the Stockholm Bloodbath, a massacre of opposition figures.
  • MadridIn June 1561, Philip II moved his court into Madrid's old alcázar. By 1598, the city had grown to 80,000 people.
  • KyivKyiv changed hands sixteen times between the end of 1918 and August 1920.
  • AmsterdamAmsterdam grew rich on salted fish. A local saying says the city is built on herringbones.
  • DublinDublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland, and the 2022 census counted 1,263,219 people living in the city and its suburbs. Inside the boundary of the city council alone, the figure falls to 592,713. That gap tells you something…
  • RomeRome is the only city on earth that contains a sovereign nation entirely within its borders.
  • OsloOslo, the capital of Norway, had 724,290 residents in 2025, yet two thirds of its land is protected forest, hills and lakes. That pairing is no planning slogan. It follows from a site where a fjord ends and wooded ridges close in on every…

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