The 15 Best Cities in Europe

Dubrovnik is a medieval walled city on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, its terracotta rooftops and imposing limestone walls rising directly from the sea.

The medieval Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was the backdrop for King's Landing in Game of Thrones, bringing global fame to what was already one of the Mediterranean's most beautiful cities.

Terracotta-roofed houses stack up the steep riverbank of the Douro in Porto's Ribeira district, a tangle of narrow lanes barely changed since medieval times.

The double-decked Dom Luis I Bridge, engineered by a student of Gustave Eiffel, carries a metro line across the top and traffic below.

Port lodges line the far bank at Vila Nova de Gaia, where the wine is still aged, blended and tasted.

Berlin carries its twentieth-century history openly — the Brandenburg Gate, the remaining stretch of Wall at the East Side Gallery, and the glass dome of the Reichstag sit alongside a city that has rebuilt itself into one of Europe's most creative capitals.

Museum Island holds five major museums on a single stretch of the Spree, while neighbourhoods like Kreuzberg run a nightlife and food scene that runs well past midnight.

A compact old town of frescoed buildings wraps around the Reuss River where it leaves Lake Lucerne, crossed by the wooden, gabled Chapel Bridge that has linked both banks since the 14th century.

Mount Pilatus and Mount Rigi rise directly behind the rooftops, reachable by cogwheel train, cable car, or lake steamer, making Lucerne as much a gateway to the mountains as a destination of its own.

Vienna spent centuries as the seat of the Habsburg Empire, and the grandeur shows — the Ringstrasse boulevard circles an old town of imperial palaces, opera houses, and coffee houses that have hosted composers and philosophers for 300 years.

The Hofburg and Schönbrunn palaces anchor the city's imperial history, while the Naschmarkt and Prater park show its more everyday side.

Portugal's hilly capital rises above the Tagus estuary in tiers of pastel façades, azulejo tilework, and rattling yellow trams.

Alfama's medieval lanes climb past fado bars toward São Jorge Castle, while Belém's monuments trace the Age of Discoveries and the modern LX Factory anchors a livelier scene.

It rewards slow wandering more than a fixed itinerary, with river-view miradouros around every third corner.

Golden limestone fortifications ring this entire harbour city, built by the Knights of St John in the 16th century to withstand a siege that never came again.

Baroque church domes and balconied townhouses in faded pastel line streets laid out on a strict grid, unusual for a city of its age.

The Upper Barrakka Gardens offer a sweeping view over the Grand Harbour, with warships once anchored where cruise liners now dock.

Spain's former imperial capital sits on a granite hill almost encircled by a bend in the Tagus River, its skyline of church towers, synagogues, and mosques layered up over centuries of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim rule.

The Alcázar fortress and Gothic cathedral anchor a warren of narrow medieval streets that fan out below, and the whole old city is compact enough to see on foot in a single, dense day.

The world's smallest sovereign state packs an extraordinary concentration of art and architecture into just 44 hectares.

The colonnaded embrace of St Peter's Square, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael's frescoed Stanze make Vatican City unmissable for art lovers.

Turrets and cobbled lanes fill this Baltic old town's medieval core, ringed almost entirely by its original 13th-century defensive walls.

Toompea Hill rises above the lower town, topped by a Russian Orthodox cathedral and views over red-tiled rooftops toward the harbour.

Despite the medieval look, Tallinn is one of Europe's most digitally advanced capitals.

Ireland's capital pairs a compact, walkable historic core with a genuinely lively pub and music scene, from the Georgian squares around Trinity College — home to the Book of Kells — to the cobbled lanes of Temple Bar.

The Guinness Storehouse and Kilmainham Gaol offer two very different sides of the city's story, industrial and political, while traditional music sessions spill out of pubs most nights of the week.

One of Europe's smallest and most walkable capitals, Ljubljana centers on a car-free riverside old town beneath a hilltop castle, its Ljubljanica River crossed by architect Jože Plečnik's distinctive bridges, including the dragon-flanked Dragon Bridge.

Riverside cafés, a lively open-air market and a compact, green city center make it an easy place to explore in a day or two, with a noticeably relaxed pace.

A compact, colorful university city on Ireland's west coast, Galway trades Dublin's scale for a tighter concentration of traditional music pubs, street buskers and independent shops along its pedestrianized Latin Quarter.

It's the natural gateway to Connemara and the Aran Islands, but has enough character — the Spanish Arch, the Saturday market, a lively arts festival calendar — to justify a stop on its own.

Iceland's compact and colourful capital sits between the mountains and the sea as the world's most northerly capital city.

Rainbow-painted corrugated iron houses, the soaring Hallgrímskirkja church, and a bar and music scene far larger than the population suggests fill a centre small enough to cross on foot.

It doubles as the base for Northern Lights trips and Golden Circle day tours.

London packs two thousand years into one city: fragments of Roman wall, a Norman fortress, Georgian squares and glass towers all within a few Tube stops of each other.

Its national museums are among the best in the world and free to enter, while the parks, markets and riverside walks give the place room to breathe between landmarks.

The weather is unreliable and the prices are not, but the range of things to do is close to unmatched.