World Heritage Sites — Europe

World Heritage in Europe

Europe holds more World Heritage Sites than any other continent — about 500 of the 1,273, with Italy, Spain, Germany, and France each above 50. Part of that is history; part of it is that European countries were quickest to nominate, and the Committee has spent years trying to rebalance the list. For the traveler the density is the gift: a week in northern Italy can tick Venice, Verona, Vicenza, Padua's frescoes, Mantua and Sabbioneta, the Dolomites, and the Prosecco hills without ever driving more than two hours.

The list is heavy on historic city centers — Prague, Vienna, Kraków, Tallinn, Bruges, Bath, Edinburgh's Old and New Towns — which means many travelers have a dozen sites before they know the list exists. The natural sites are fewer and further apart: the Dolomites, Plitvice Lakes, the Norwegian fjords, the Jungfrau-Aletsch glaciers, the Wadden Sea, and the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

Where the lines are

This page uses a geographic Europe. Turkey's 21 sites are here, as are western Russia's, including the Kremlin and St Petersburg; Siberian Russia's are on the Asia map, along with Israel and the Caucasus. Iceland, the Azores, Madeira, and the Canaries are included, and Greenland's sites sit with North America. Click a site badge or its pin to mark it visited, again for want-to-go; every mark here also counts on the world overview.

Sites that aren't where you'd expect

Europe's list rewards reading past the postcards. The Struve Geodetic Arc is a 19th-century survey line of 34 markers running from Norway to the Black Sea through ten countries; it's one site, and most of the markers are a stone in a field. The Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps are 111 underwater sites in six countries, also counted once. The Works of Le Corbusier span seven countries on three continents as a single listing. And the beech forests, which began as a Slovak–Ukrainian nomination in 2007, now stretch across eighteen countries. If you're counting sites rather than places, those four alone cover half the continent.