Ask a room full of people for the capital of Switzerland and you'll hear "Zurich!" and "Geneva!" before anyone says Bern. Europe is full of these traps: the biggest or most famous city often isn't the capital.
The easy ones (mostly)
Many European capitals are also the biggest city: Paris, Madrid, Rome, Lisbon, Vienna, Athens, Dublin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Prague, Warsaw and Budapest. A few stories make them easier to remember:
- Budapest was made in 1873 by joining Buda and Pest, on either side of the Danube.
- Stockholm is spread across 14 islands.
- Berlin became the capital of reunified Germany after 1990; Bonn was West Germany's capital before that.
- Madrid sits almost exactly in the middle of Spain.
Easy ones to mix up
- Switzerland: Bern, not Zurich or Geneva. Switzerland officially calls it the "federal city".
- The Netherlands: Amsterdam is the capital in the constitution, but the government sits in The Hague.
- Turkey: Ankara, not Istanbul. Ankara has been the capital since 1923; Istanbul (once Constantinople) was the Ottoman capital.
- Scotland: Edinburgh, not Glasgow, even though Glasgow is bigger.
A rule of thumb: if a country has one very famous city, check before you guess. Capitals are often chosen for politics or history, not size.
Try it
Cover the answers and say each capital before you flip. Where in the world is the capital with the fewest people of any EU country?
(It's Valletta, on Malta: under 6,000 people live in the city itself.)