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.

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 August 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.

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.

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.

Link to this report's codebookWe are pleased to launch the 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities (prototype version). This is the first report comparing the performance of capital cities and a selection of large metropolitan areas in the European-Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In total, results for 45 European cities are presented in this first prototype version. The report was prepared by a team of researchers from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Brabant Center for Sustainable Development (Telos, Tilburg University).It builds on SDSN’s experience in designing SDG indicators for nations and metropolitan areas. The report also builds on TELOS’ previous work on “Sustainability Monitoring of European Cities” (2014) prepared in collaboration with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment (Zoeteman et al. 2014) which led to the development of an interactive platform on request of the Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (Zoeteman et al. 2016)1.This report comes at a key opportunity for Europe to increase its focus on the SDGs, with the election of the new European Parliament in May, the new Presidency of the Council of the EU moving to Finland in July, and the arrival of a new European Commission by the end of the year. The European Union can and should strengthen its policy measures to achieve all of the SDGs. In that context, the European Commission’s January 2019 Reflection Paper “Towards a sustainable Europe by 2030” highlights various scenarios to support the SDGs over the next decade. The report by the European Commission highlights the opportunities to address the SDGs as part of the next EU Urban Agenda.Achieving the SDGs will require, at the local level, deep transformations in transportation, energy and urban planning and new approaches to address poverty and inequalities in access to key public services including health and education. The SDSN estimates that about two-thirds (65%) of the 169 SDG targets underlying the 17 SDGs can only be reached with the proper engagement of, and coordination with, local and regional governments (SDSN 2015).Similarly, UN-Habitat estimates that around one-third of all SDGs indicators have a local or urban component2. The Urban Agenda for the European Union launched in May 2016 (Pact of Amsterdam), recognizes the crucial role of cities in achieving the SDGs. Over two-thirds of EU citizens live in urban areas while about 85% of the EU’s GDP is generated in cities (European Commission 2019). The urban population in Europe is projected to rise to just over 80% by 2050 (European Commission 2016).This 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards for European Cities (prototype version) finds that no European capital city or large metropolitan area has of yet fully achieved the SDGs. Nordic European cities – Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen – are closest to the SDG targets but still face challenges in achieving one or several of the SDGs. Overall, the cities in Europe perform best on SDG 3 (Health and Well-Being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). By contrast, performance is lowest on SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).As always, our analysis is constrained by the availability, quality and comparability of data. These data constraints are even greater at the subnational level. Despite the ground breaking work conducted by the European Commission – notably via Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre – to define territorial levels and metropolitan areas and to standardize subnational data and indicators, major gaps remain to monitor all of the SDGs. A table summarizing some of these major gaps is included in this report.The need to expand and strengthen SDG monitoring in regions and municipalities across Europe in the coming years was raised extensively in the consultation made by SDSN as part of its 2019 study on “Exposing EU policy gaps to address the Sustainable Development Goals” prepared in collaboration with the European Economic and Social Committee (Lafortune and Schmidt-Traub 2019) . This was also one of the recom- mendations made by ESAC during the consultation phase for the “2017 Sustainable development in the European Union — Monitoring report on progress towards the SDGs in an EU context” (European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC) 2017).We hope this first 2019 SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities (prototype version) will help to identify the major SDG priorities in urban Europe. All data and analyses included in this report are available on SDSN’s and TELOS’ data portals (www.sdgindex.org and www.telos.nl). Individual city profiles are accessible online. We very much welcome comments and suggestions for filling gaps in the data used for this index and for improving the analysis and presentation of the results. Please contact us at info@sdgindex.org or telos@uvt.nl.Jeffrey Sachs,Director SDSNGeert Duijsters,Dean Tilburg School of economics, Tilburg University - Telos

As of 2025, Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan was the largest world urban agglomeration, with 37 million people living there. Delhi ranked second with more than 34 million, with Shanghai in third with more than 30 million inhabitants.

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.

A dataset of grid level (500m by 500m) accessibility indicators measured in peak traffic and free flow conditions for all cities (represented by the Functional Urban Area) with more than 250 thousand people in EU27, the UK, Switzerland and Norway.

The average for 2023 based on 27 countries was 74.4 percent. The highest value was in Belgium: 98.19 percent and the lowest value was in Slovakia: 54.03 percent. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

The two files contains respectively a map of driving distances around major and minor cities in Europe. The distance is given by range of 5 km from 5 to 45 km in a resolution of 100m*100m. The encoding is uint8.

The metropolitan areas considered in this study are those from this study of functional urban area definition.

The corresponding geofile is available at this adress.

Most of the cities with more than 50'000 habitants are included, some cities have been removed or added depending on the local context.

As the geofile contains only polygones of the metropolitan areas and not the city point, the points form cities with the number of habitants have been dowloaded from Natural Data and then selected by comparison with the polygones.

Cities with more than 20'000 have also been selected as commuting center for rural areas. Only the cities outside the metropolitan commuting zones are included.

The calculation of driving distances around centers have been performed with OpenRouteService (personal API key required, free of charge).

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.

Introduction: Access to the healthcare system when patients are vulnerable and living outside metropolitan areas can be challenging. Our objective was to explore healthcare system satisfaction of urban and rural inhabitants depending on financial and health vulnerabilities.Methods: Repeated cross-sectional data from 353,523 European citizens (2002–2016). Multivariable associations between rural areas, vulnerability factors and satisfaction with the healthcare system were assessed with linear mixed regressions and adjusted with sociodemographic and control factors.Results: In unadjusted analysis, the people who lived in houses in the countryside and those who lived in the suburbs were the most satisfied with the healthcare system. In the adjusted model, residents living in big cities had the highest satisfaction. Financial and health vulnerabilities were associated with less satisfaction with the healthcare system, with a different effect according to the area of residence: the presence of health vulnerability was more negatively correlated with the healthcare system satisfaction of big city inhabitants, whereas financial vulnerability was more negatively correlated with the satisfaction of those living in countryside homes.Conclusion: Vulnerable residents, depending on their area of residence, may require special attention to increase their satisfaction with the healthcare system.

This repository contains data described in the article "Data on different types of green spaces and their accessibility in the seven largest urban regions in Finland" (Heikinheimo et al. 2023) and used in the research article "Associations of neighborhood-level socioeconomic status, accessibility, and quality of green spaces in Finnish urban regions" (Viinikka et al. 2023).

This repository contains data on green space quality and path distances to different types of green spaces. The path distances represent green space accessibility using active travel modes (walking, cycling). The path distances were calculated using the pedestrian street network across the seven largest urban regions in Finland. We derived the green space typology from the Urban Atlas Data that is available across functional urban areas in Europe and enhanced it with national data on water bodies, conservation areas and recreational facilities and routes from Finland. We extracted the walkable street network from OpenStreetMap and calculated shortest paths to different types of green spaces using open-source Python programming tools. Network distances were calculated up to ten kilometers from each green space edge and the distances were aggregated into a 250 m x 250 m statistical grid that is interoperable with various statistical data from Finland. The geospatial data files representing the different types of green spaces, network distances across the seven urban regions, as well as the processing and analysis scripts are shared in an open repository. These data offer actionable information about green space accessibility in Finnish city regions and support the integration of green space quality and active travel modes into further research and planning activities.

Data description article:

Heikinheimo, V., Tiitu, M., & Viinikka, A. (2023). Data on different types of green spaces and their accessibility in the seven largest urban regions in Finland. Data in Brief, 50, 109458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2023.109458

Related research article:

Viinikka, A., Tiitu, M., Heikinheimo, V., Halonen, J. I., Nyberg, E., & Vierikko, K. (2023). Associations of neighborhood-level socioeconomic status, accessibility, and quality of green spaces in Finnish urban regions. Applied Geography, 157, 102973. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2023.102973

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.

Large multinational firms (LMF) play a crucial role in the dynamics of knowledge production worldwide. The study conducted by Université Eiffel, using inventive activities as a central marker, highlights in particular four major results: (i) Large groups represent 80% of worldwide international inventive activities and, contrary to many expectations, this role has increased over the last decade. (ii) Though LMF are present in 60% of inventive metropolitan areas, the top 100 metropolitan areas worldwide concentrate 80% of LMF international patents. (iii) Large metropolitan areas gather 90% of international patents in Asia, 70% in the US, but only 37% in Europe. Europe has thus a very different structure where inventive activities are more distributed with a central role of medium-size metropolitan areas. (iv) ‘National’ LMF play a majority role in the overall production of metropolitan areas: over 90% in Asia, and 75% in the US. In Europe, this share is only 57%. This highlights the role of LMF from other European countries (23%) and from outside of Europe (20%). These four results question research and innovation policies and call for an open debate about their policy-mix and their role in distributive and inclusion objectives. The study has been conducted, using in an integrated way the three major resources developed within RISIS: CIB dataset on large firms, RISIS patent database on patents, and CORTEXT geolocation on metropolitan areas.

DOI retrieved: 2023

In this paper, the authors construct a unique data set of Internet offer prices for flats in 48 large European cities from 24 countries. The data are collected between January and May 2012 from 33 websites, where the advertisements of flats for sale are placed. Using the resulting sample of 750,000 announcements the authors compute the average city-specific house prices. Based on this information they investigate the determinants of the apartment prices. Four factors are found to be relevant for the flats’ price level: income per capita, population density, unemployment rate, and income inequality. The results are robust both to excluding variables and to applying two alternative estimation techniques: OLS and quantile regression. Based on their estimation results the authors are able to identify the cities, where the prices are overvalued. This is a useful indication of a build-up of house price bubbles.

This statistic shows the largest urban settlements in the Netherlands in 2021. In 2021, around 1.13 million people lived in Amsterdam, making it the largest city in the Netherlands. Population of the Netherlands With the global financial crisis in 2008 as well as the Euro zone crisis, many countries in Europe suffered a great economic impact. In spite of the crisis, the Netherlands maintained a stable economy over the past decade. The country's unemployment rate, for example, has been kept at a relatively low level in comparison to other countries in Europe also affected by the economic crisis. In 2014, Spain had an unemployment rate of more than 25 percent. The Netherlands' population has also seen increases in growth in comparison to previous years, with the figures slowly decreasing since 2011. As a result of the increase in population, the degree of urbanization - which is the share of the population living in urban areas - has increased, while the size of the labor force in the Netherlands has been relatively stable over the past decade. The population density of inhabitants per square kilometer in the Netherlands has also increased. Large cities in the Netherlands have experienced the impact of the population density growth and increase in the size of the labor force first hand. Three cities in the Netherlands have over half a million residents (as can be seen above). Additionally, more and more visitors are coming to the kingdom: The number of tourists in the Netherlands has increased significantly since 2001, a change which has also impacted the country's metropolises. Due to its location and affordable accommodation prices, the country’s tourism industry is developing and the largest cities in the Netherlands are taking advantage of it.

This dataset contains the data displayed in the figures or the article "High-resolution projections of ambient heat for major European cities using different heat metrics".

The different files contain:

Data_Fig1_DeltaTXx_EURO-CORDEX_1981-2010_to_3K-European-warming_RCP85.nc: Change of yearly maximum temperature in Europe between 1981-2010 and 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010.

Data_Fig2_timeseries-GSAT-ESAT_EURO-CORDEX_CMIP5_CMIP6_1971-2100_RCP85_SSP585.xlsx: Time series of global mean surface air temperature (GSAT) for CMIP5 and CMIP6 models, and for European mean surface air temperature (ESAT) for EURO-CORDEX, CMIP5, and CMIP6 models for the period 1971-2100.

Data_Fig3_TX-distribution_distance-from-city-centre_E-OBS_1981-2010.xlsx: Distribution of average daily maximum temperature in summer (June, July, August) in 1981-2010 for E-OBS for all investigated cities. Temperature data are indicated as a function of the distance to the city centre.

Data_Fig3_TX-distribution_distance-from-city-centre_ERA5-Land_1981-2010.xlsx: Distribution of average daily maximum temperature in summer (June, July, August) in 1981-2010 for ERA5-Land for all investigated cities. Temperature data are indicated as a function of the distance to the city centre.

Data_Fig3_TX-distribution_distance-from-city-centre_EURO-CORDEX_1981-2010.xlsx: Distribution of average daily maximum temperature in summer (June, July, August) in 1981-2010 for the EURO-CORDEX models for all investigated cities. Temperature data are indicated as a function of the distance to the city centre.

Data_Fig3_TX-distribution_distance-from-city-centre_weather-stations_1981-2010.xlsx: Distribution of average daily maximum temperature in summer (June, July, August) in 1981-2010 for GSOD and ECA&D stations for all investigated cities. Temperature data are indicated as a function of the distance to the city centre.

Data_Fig4_TX-ambient-heat_EURO-CORDEX_3K-European-warming.xlsx: Daytime heat metrics for the investigated cities: HWMId-TX at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, TX exceedances above 30 °C at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, and TXx change between 1981-2010 and 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010 for EURO-CORDEX models.

Data_Fig5_Contribution-of-explanatory-variables-to-total-explained-variance.xlsx: Contribution of different explanatory variables (climate and location factors) to the total explained variance of spatial patterns of heat metrics.

Data_Fig6_TN-ambient-heat_EURO-CORDEX_3K-European-warming.xlsx: Nighttime heat metrics for the investigated cities: HWMId-TN at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, TN exceedances above 20 °C at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, and TNx change between 1981-2010 and 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010 for EURO-CORDEX models.

Data_Fig7_TX-ambient-heat_CMIP5_3K-European-warming.xlsx: Daytime heat metrics for the investigated cities: HWMId-TX at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, TX exceedances above 30 °C at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, and TXx change between 1981-2010 and 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010 for CMIP5 models.

Data_Fig7_TX-ambient-heat_CMIP6_3K-European-warming.xlsx: Daytime heat metrics for the investigated cities: HWMId-TX at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, TX exceedances above 30 °C at 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010, and TXx change between 1981-2010 and 3 °C European warming relative to 1981-2010 for CMIP6 models.

Data_Fig8_GCM-RCM-matrix_ambient-heat_3K-European-warming.xlsx: GCM-RCM matrices for the three heat metrics.