European capitals

Pastel Ottoman relics, cold war subterranean bunkers & pulsating Blloku terraces

Europe's highest capital: a medieval parliament, thermal baths & a UNESCO valley

Imperial palaces, monumental boulevards & historic coffee houses

Restored seventeenth-century Upper Town churches, the Svislach River curve and monumental postwar avenues

Art Nouveau, beer cafés & the finest frites

Where East meets West: Ottoman Baščaršija, Austro-Hungarian boulevards & resilient Olympic valley

Gold-domed Neo-Byzantine cathedral, Roman Serdica ruins & Mount Vitosha backdrop

Austro-Hungarian avenues, vibrant café life & quirky museums

Venetian walls, layered neighbourhoods and a city divided by the Green Line

A thousand years of architecture & the best-poured beer in Europe

Harbour swimming, bicycles & the best lunch in Scandinavia

Medieval streets, creative districts & Baltic food

Design, sauna culture & islands on the doorstep

Museums, bistros & the city everyone thinks they already know

History on every corner, art everywhere & nights that never end

The Acropolis, rooftop evenings & tavernas that run late

Thermal baths, the Danube & ruin bars in old courtyards

Colourful capital & gateway to geysers, glaciers and lagoons

Georgian squares, venerable literary haunts & lively trad music pubs

Twenty-eight centuries stacked on top of one another

Europe's youngest capital: a 1461 mosque, a famously strange library & very good coffee

Art Nouveau capital, Hanseatic spires & Zeppelin market halls

A prince's castle, a black-cube art museum & vineyards on the Rhine

Baroque capital, bohemian Užupis republic & Grand Duchy hills

A fortress capital split by gorges: casemates, the Grund & a glass Kirchberg

The Knights' fortress capital, Caravaggio & the harbour of the Great Siege

Leafy boulevards, markets and a capital that opens up slowly

The Grimaldi palace, a cliff-top aquarium & the old town on the Rock

Modern capital on six rivers, monumental Resurrection cathedral & Europe's largest single vineyard

Canals, Golden Age art & a city built for bicycles

Ottoman bazaar, a river of monuments & a city rebuilt twice in one century

Fjord-side architecture, Munch & forest at the end of the metro

Reconstructed Old Town, royal palaces, moving museums & modern Vistula energy

Hills, tiles, seafood & Atlantic light

Monumental palaces, Belle Époque boulevards & leafy garden bistros

Fifteenth-century Kremlin cathedrals, patterned domes on Red Square and world-class art collections

A hilltop republic of three towers, sheer cliffs & Adriatic views

Where the Sava meets the Danube: historic citadel, vibrant Dorćol streets & storied kafana nights

Danube panoramas, Gothic coronation towers & Little Carpathian wine cellars

A river, a castle & Europe's most walkable capital

Great art, late nights & tapas bar to tapas bar

A capital on fourteen islands, with fika & the archipelago

UNESCO sandstone arcades, glacial river swims & clockwork towers

Gold-domed Kyivan Rus cathedrals, chestnut hills and historic Podil above the Dnipro

Free museums, old pubs & a city of a hundred villages

Capital of the Turkish Republic, monumental Anıtkabir, Museum of Anatolian Civilizations & citadel alleys