In 2025, Moscow was the largest city in Europe with an estimated urban agglomeration of 12.74 million people. The French capital, Paris, was the second largest city in 2025 at 11.35 million, followed by the capitals of the United Kingdom and Spain, with London at 9.84 million and Madrid at 6.81 million people. Istanbul, which would otherwise be the largest city in Europe in 2025, is excluded as it is only partially in Europe, with a sizeable part of its population living in Asia. Europe’s population is almost 750 million Since 1950, the population of Europe has increased by approximately 200 million people, increasing from 550 million to 750 million in these seventy years. Before the turn of the millennium, Europe was the second-most populated continent, before it was overtaken by Africa, which saw its population increase from 228 million in 1950 to 817 million by 2000. Asia has consistently had the largest population of the world’s continents and was estimated to have a population of 4.6 billion. Europe’s largest countries Including its territory in Asia, Russia is by far the largest country in the world, with a territory of around 17 million square kilometers, almost double that of the next largest country, Canada. Within Europe, Russia also has the continent's largest population at 145 million, followed by Germany at 83 million and the United Kingdom at almost 68 million. By contrast, Europe is also home to various micro-states such as San Marino, which has a population of just 30 thousand.

It is estimated that the cities of Cordova (modern-day Córdoba) and Palermo were the largest cities in Europe in 1050, and had between fifteen and twenty times the population of most other entries in this graph, Despite this the cities of Cordova (the capital city of the Umayyad caliphate, who controlled much of the Iberian peninsula from the seventh to eleventh centuries), and Palermo (another Arab-controlled capital in Southern Europe) were still the only cities in Western Europe with a population over one hundred thousand people, closely followed by Seville. It is also noteworthy to point out that the five largest cities on this list were importing trading cities, in modern day Spain or Italy, although the largest cities become more northern and western European in later lists (1200, 1330, 1500, 1650 and 1800). In 1050, todays largest Western European cities, London and Paris, had just twenty-five and twenty thousand inhabitants respectively.

The period of European history (and much of world history) between 500 and 1500 is today known as the 'Dark Ages'. Although the term 'Dark Ages' was originally applied to the lack of literature and arts, it has since been applied to the lack or scarcity of recorded information from this time. Because of these limitations, much information about this time is still being debated today.

The largest Western European city in 1200 was Palermo, with 150 thousand inhabitants. This is a great decrease in the number 150 years previously, where the population was 350 thousand. The city of Cordova also decreased by almost 400 thousand in this time, possibly because of the declining Arabian control and influence in the area. Seville is the third largest city on this list, although it's overall population decreased by ten thousand since 1050. The largest cities are generally in Spain or Italy, although the second largest city on this list is Paris, with 110 thousand inhabitants. In the lists that follow, Paris remains at the top as either the largest (1500 and 1650) or second largest (1330 and 1800) city in Western Europe.

Paris was Western Europe's largest city in 1650, with an estimated 400 thousand inhabitants, which is almost double it's population 150 years previously. In second place is London, with 350 thousand inhabitants, however it has grown by a substantially higher rate than Paris during this time, now seven times larger than it was in the year 1500. Naples remains in the top three largest cities, growing from 125 to 300 thousand inhabitants during this time. In the previous list, the Italian cities of Milan and Venice were the only other cities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, however in this list they have been joined by the trading centers of Lisbon and Amsterdam, the capital cities of the emerging Portuguese and Dutch maritime empires.

Population in the largest city (% of urban population) in European Union was reported at 15.91 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. European Union - Population in the largest city - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on September of 2025.

It is estimated that the largest cities in Western Europe in 1330 were Paris and Granada. At this time, Paris was the seat of power in northern France, while Granada had become the largest multicultural city in southern Spain, controlled by the Muslim, Nasrid Kingdom during Spain's Reconquista period. The next three largest cities were Venice, Genoa and Milan, all in northern Italy, renowned as important trading cities during the middle ages. In October 1347, the first wave of the Black Death had arrived in Sicily and then began spreading throughout Europe, decimating the population.

By 1800, London had grown to be the largest city in Western Europe with just under one million inhabitants. Paris was now the second largest city, with over half a million people, and Naples was the third largest city with 450 thousand people. The only other cities with over two hundred thousand inhabitants at this time were Vienna, Amsterdam and Dublin. Another noticeable development is the inclusion of many more northern cities from a wider variety of countries. The dominance of cities from France and Mediterranean countries was no longer the case, and the dispersal of European populations in 1800 was much closer to how it is today, more than two centuries later.

Data on European cities were collected in the Urban Audit and in the Large City Audit project. The projects' ultimate goal is to contribute towards the improvement of the quality of urban life: it supports the exchange of experience among European cities; it helps to identify best practices; it facilitates benchmarking at the European level and provides information on the dynamics within the cities and with their surroundings.

At the city level, the Urban Audit contains more than 130 variables and more than 50 indicators. These indicators are derived from the variables collected by the European Statistical System.

The data is published in 20 tables within 2 main groups, plus a perception survey table:

Cities and greater cities (urb_cgc)

Population on 1 January by age groups and sex - cities and greater cities (urb_cpop1)
Population structure - cities and greater cities (urb_cpopstr)
Population by citizenship and country of birth - cities and greater cities (urb_cpopcb)
Fertility and mortality - cities and greater cities (urb_cfermor)

Living conditions - cities and greater cities (urb_clivcon)

Education - cities and greater cities (urb_ceduc)

Culture and tourism - cities and greater cities (urb_ctour)
Labour market - cities and greater cities (urb_clma)
Economy and finance - cities and greater cities (urb_cecfi)
Transport - cities and greater cities (urb_ctran)
Environment - cities and greater cities (urb_cenv)

Functional Urban Area (urb_luz)

Population on 1 January by age groups and sex - Functional Urban Area (urb_lpop1)
Population structure - Functional Urban Area (urb_lpopstr)
Population by citizenship and country of birth - Functional Urban Area (urb_lpopcb)
Fertility and mortality - Functional Urban Area (urb_lfermor)
Living conditions - Functional Urban Area (urb_llivcon)
Education - Functional Urban Area (urb_leduc)
Labour market - Functional Urban Area (urb_llma)
Transport - Functional Urban Area (urb_ltran)
Environment - Functional Urban Area (urb_lenv)
Perception survey results (urb_percep)

Data has been collected on two spatial levels in the Urban Audit:

• The City (C) according to the administrative definition, as the basic level,
• The Functional Urban Area (FUA) being an approximation of the functional urban zone centered around the city

In 1500, the largest city was Paris, with an estimated 225 thousand inhabitants, almost double the population of the second-largest city, Naples. As in 1330, Venice and Milan remain the third and fourth largest cities in Western Europe, however Genoa's population almost halved from 1330 until 1500, as it was struck heavily by the bubonic plague in the mid-1300s. In lists prior to this, the largest cities were generally in Spain and Italy, however, as time progressed, the largest populations could be found more often in Italy and France. The year 1500 is around the beginning of what we now consider modern history, a time that saw the birth of many European empires and inter-continental globalization.

Data on European cities were collected in the Urban Audit and in the Large City Audit project. The projects' ultimate goal is to contribute towards the improvement of the quality of urban life: it supports the exchange of experience among European cities; it helps to identify best practices; it facilitates benchmarking at the European level and provides information on the dynamics within the cities and with their surroundings.

At the city level, the Urban Audit contains more than 130 variables and more than 50 indicators. These indicators are derived from the variables collected by the European Statistical System.

The data is published in 20 tables within 2 main groups, plus a perception survey table:

Cities and greater cities (urb_cgc)

Population on 1 January by age groups and sex - cities and greater cities (urb_cpop1)
Population structure - cities and greater cities (urb_cpopstr)
Population by citizenship and country of birth - cities and greater cities (urb_cpopcb)
Fertility and mortality - cities and greater cities (urb_cfermor)

Living conditions - cities and greater cities (urb_clivcon)

Education - cities and greater cities (urb_ceduc)

Culture and tourism - cities and greater cities (urb_ctour)
Labour market - cities and greater cities (urb_clma)
Economy and finance - cities and greater cities (urb_cecfi)
Transport - cities and greater cities (urb_ctran)
Environment - cities and greater cities (urb_cenv)

Functional Urban Area (urb_luz)

Population on 1 January by age groups and sex - Functional Urban Area (urb_lpop1)
Population structure - Functional Urban Area (urb_lpopstr)
Population by citizenship and country of birth - Functional Urban Area (urb_lpopcb)
Fertility and mortality - Functional Urban Area (urb_lfermor)
Living conditions - Functional Urban Area (urb_llivcon)
Education - Functional Urban Area (urb_leduc)
Labour market - Functional Urban Area (urb_llma)
Transport - Functional Urban Area (urb_ltran)
Environment - Functional Urban Area (urb_lenv)
Perception survey results (urb_percep)

Data has been collected on two spatial levels in the Urban Audit:

• The City (C) according to the administrative definition, as the basic level,
• The Functional Urban Area (FUA) being an approximation of the functional urban zone centered around the city

Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population sizes of medieval European cities, and comparative analyses of these data have shed much light on the long-term evolution of urban systems. However, the next step—to systematically relate the population size of these cities to their spatial and socioeconomic characteristics—has seldom been taken. This raises a series of interesting questions, as both modern and ancient cities have been observed to obey area-population relationships predicted by settlement scaling theory. To address these questions, we analyze a new dataset for the settled area and population of 173 European cities from the early fourteenth century to determine the relationship between population and settled area. To interpret this data, we develop two related models that lead to differing predictions regarding the quantitative form of the population-area relationship, depending on the level of social mixing present in these cities. Our empirical estimates of model parameters show a strong densification of cities with city population size, consistent with patterns in contemporary cities. Although social life in medieval Europe was orchestrated by hierarchical institutions (e.g., guilds, church, municipal organizations), our results show no statistically significant influence of these institutions on agglomeration effects. The similarities between the empirical patterns of settlement relating area to population observed here support the hypothesis that cities throughout history share common principles of organization that self-consistently relate their socioeconomic networks to structured urban spaces.

This horizontal bar chart displays urban land area (km²) by capital city using the aggregation sum in Europe. The data is about countries.

Between 1500 and 1800, London grew to be the largest city in Western Europe, with its population growing almost 22 times larger in this period. London would eventually overtake Constantinople as Europe's largest in the 1700s, before becoming the largest city in the world (ahead of Beijing) in the early-1800s.

The most populous cities in this period were the capitals of European empires, with Paris, Amsterdam, and Vienna growing to become the largest cities, alongside the likes of Lisbon and Madrid in Iberia, and Naples or Venice in Italy. Many of northwestern Europe's largest cities in 1500 would eventually be overtaken by others not shown here, such as the port cities of Hamburg, Marseilles or Rotterdam, or more industrial cities such as Berlin, Birmingham, and Munich.

The city of Paris in France had an estimated gross domestic product of 757.6 billion Euros in 2021, the most of any European city. Paris was followed by the spanish capital, Madrid, which had a GDP of 237.5 billion Euros, and the Irish capital, Dublin at 230 billion Euros. Milan, in the prosperous north of Italy, had a GDP of 228.4 billion Euros, 65 billion euros larger than the Italian capital Rome, and was the largest non-capital city in terms of GDP in Europe. The engine of Europe Among European countries, Germany had by far the largest economy, with a gross domestic product of over 4.18 trillion Euros. The United Kingdom or France have been Europe's second largest economy since the 1980s, depending on the year, with forecasts suggesting France will overtake the UK going into the 2020s. Germany however, has been the biggest European economy for some time, with five cities (Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt) among the 15 largest European cities by GDP. Europe's largest cities In 2023, Moscow was the largest european city, with a population of nearly 12.7 million. Paris was the largest city in western Europe, with a population of over 11 million, while London was Europe's third-largest city at 9.6 million inhabitants.

This horizontal bar chart displays female population (people) by capital city using the aggregation sum in Western Europe. The data is about countries per year.

This horizontal bar chart displays population (people) by capital city using the aggregation sum in Europe. The data is filtered where the date is 2021. The data is about countries per year.

Top European Cities by Number of Cinema Seats, 2017 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

This horizontal bar chart displays GDP (current US$) by capital city using the aggregation sum in Western Europe. The data is filtered where the date is 2023. The data is about countries per year.

Top European Cities by Cinema Attendance, 2017 Discover more data with ReportLinker!