Curated category
Regions of Europe
- Eastern EuropeEastern Europe resists a single definition. Scholars have noted that there are almost as many definitions of the region as there are scholars who study it.
- Western EuropeWestern Europe is a region whose borders have never been quite fixed. Ask a historian, a cartographer at the United Nations, and an analyst at the CIA to…
- ScandinaviaScandinavia is a subregion of northern Europe, and depending on who you ask, its borders shift. At its core, it names three countries: Denmark, Norway, and…
- Central EuropeCentral Europe sits at the crossroads of the continent, a region pressed between Eastern, Southern, Western and Northern Europe, where empires have risen…
- East PrussiaIn the 13th century, Duke Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to conquer the native Old Prussians. These crusading orders established a monastic…
- SudetenlandThe word Sudetenland did not exist as a unified territory before 1938. It emerged from the German language compound of Sudeten, referring to the mountain…
- South CaucasusThe South Caucasus sits at a crossroads that has never been peaceful for long. Flanked by the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east, this…
- Baltic regionAdam of Bremen, a German chronicler from the 11th century, was the first person to label this body of water the Baltic Sea.
- Italian PeninsulaThe Italian Peninsula juts into the central Mediterranean Sea like a high-heeled boot mid-stride, one of the most recognizable landmasses on any map of…
- Iberian PeninsulaThe Iberian Peninsula covers roughly 583,254 square kilometers, and it holds about 53 million people. That makes it the second-largest peninsula in Europe…
- Baltic statesThe Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - share a coastline, a common modern fate, and a word that traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root…
- Continental EuropeContinental Europe is the contiguous landmass of Europe, stripped of its surrounding islands, and it goes by more names than almost any comparable geographic…
- BalkansThe Balkans sit at the hinge of Europe, a region so contested in its very definition that the philosopher Slavoj Zizek once observed it always lies…
- BoeotiaThe Cephissus river flows through the central lowlands of Boeotia, where most of the region's flat terrain lies. Mount Parnassus rises in the west while…
- Nordic countriesThe Nordic countries occupy a stretch of the globe so vast it spans five time zones, from the Canadian-facing coast of Greenland in the west to the border…