Curated playlist
Regions of Europe with multiple official languages
- BashkortostanBashkortostan sits wedged between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains, a republic the size of a small country that most people in the world have never heard of. With a population of just over four million as of 2025, it is the most…
- ChechnyaChechnya sits wedged between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in a corner of Eastern Europe that has refused, for centuries, to be governed by anyone who arrived uninvited. The republic covers roughly 16,500 square kilometers, a territory…
- DagestanDagestan holds a distinction that most people would never guess: it is the southernmost tip of Russia, a republic that shares borders not just with fellow Russian regions but with Azerbaijan and Georgia, and opens its eastern flank to the…
- IngushetiaIngushetia holds a distinction that defies easy explanation: it is one of the poorest, most conflict-scarred republics in Russia, and yet, as of 2017, it also has the highest life expectancy in the entire country. Covering just 3,600…
- Galicia (Spain)Galicia sits in the far northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, a green land of cliffs, river valleys, and drowned coastal inlets. Strabo, the ancient geographer, described the people the Romans found here as the most difficult foes…
- Faroe IslandsTórshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, receives only 840 hours of sunshine a year, the fewest recorded of any city in the world. This is a place of fjords and cliffs, sparse vegetation, and few trees, scattered across the North…
- KalmykiaKalmykia is the only place in Europe where Buddhism is the majority religion. Tucked into the steppes of southern Russia, this republic of roughly 275,000 people traces its spiritual life not to Rome or Constantinople but to Tibet. How did…
- Komi RepublicThe Komi Republic sits in the northeast of European Russia, a territory larger than Germany, where forests cover more than 70% of the land and winter temperatures can plunge to -58.1 degrees Celsius. At its heart is the city of Syktyvkar,…
- WalesWales, known in its own language as Cymru, sits on the western edge of the island of Great Britain, bounded by the Irish Sea, the Bristol Channel, and the Celtic Sea on three sides, with England as its only land neighbour. Three point two…
- BrusselsBrussels carries two identities at once, and both are real. It is the capital of Belgium, seat of a monarchy that dates to 1831, and at the same time the de facto capital of the European Union, hosting the administrative, executive, and…
- Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland sits in the north-east corner of the island of Ireland, and it has never been easy to agree on what to call it. At the 2021 census, just over 1.9 million people lived there, making up around 3% of the United Kingdom's…