So you love nothing better than exploring some of the world’s finest and most fascinating cities? This one’s for you. The six popular cities in the EU we’ve chosen are huge, complex and totally fascinating, so big you really need a guide whose local knowledge will help you pick out the elements you’re most inspired by. Which of these popular EU cities will you get familiar with first?
Paris – Romantic, ancient, fascinating
Paris is France’s biggest city as well as the capital. Ever since the 1600s it has been a world-class hub for finance and commerce, culture, fashion, and of course food. It also plays a vital role in the arts and sciences, making it even more fascinating. So how did it begin life?
In the middle of the third century BCE a tribe called the Parisii, related to the Celts, lived in the area where the city now stands. Because it sat on one of the time’s biggest north to south trading routes, which crossed the River Seine at île de la Cité, it fast became an important commercial centre. The Romans conquered the Paris Basin in 52 BC and set up home on the Left Bank, calling their new town Lutetia Parisiorum, ‘Lutetia of the Parisii’. Prosperity followed and they built the usual Roman essentials: a forum, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre. Roll time forward to the end of the Roman Empire and the city was called Parisius, later translated to Paris.
These days the city welcomes as many as 38 million visitors a year, more than 12 million of whom are French. 2022’s best-loved Parisian cultural attractions included the Louvre Museum, Eiffel Tower Musée d’Orsay and the Pompidou Centre. But there’s so much more to see in this vibrant city, much of it hidden, which makes a guided travel experience seriously special. To see the Paris most of the tourists miss in the flurry of major attractions, a guide can introduce you to the city known and loved by its residents. And you won’t be disappointed.
Oddly, a tiny number of people visiting Paris suffer from something called Paris syndrome, where their experience doesn’t meet up to their expectations. Luckily, guided travel in Paris is an excellent way to avoid it!
Rome – Bustling, hilly, panoramic
Archaeologists have found evidence of people living in the Rome area dating back fourteen thousand years. The capital city of Italy and of the Lazio region, Rome sits in the central-western area of the Italian Peninsula, home to the mighty River Tiber. It also contains the tiny Vatican City, the world’s smallest nation and the plant’s only city within a city.
Rome’s famous seven hills keep things interesting. Known as the cradle of Western civilization, this is a very green city with loads of lovely public parks and nature reserves, one of the biggest areas of green space in any of Europe’s capitals, studded with massive villas and landscaped gardens built by the aristocracy. Rome’s countless archaeological and artistic treasures are world-class, viewable at its many museums including the Capitoline, Vatican, Galleria Borghese and many more, some dedicated to contemporary art.
Add the stunning aqueducts, fountains, churches, palaces, historical buildings, monuments, ruins and catacombs and it’s no surprise this is the EU’s third most visited city, second only to London and Paris. So how do you whittle all this magic down into a manageable plan for your visit, a plan that takes in everything you’re most interested in, separating the wheat from the chaff? Book guided travel and someone who’s intimately familiar with the city will come up with the goods. What a treat.
Brussels – Historic, varied, green
One of the oddest things about Brussels is the language. Most capital cities have one main language. Once Dutch-speaking, Brussels shifted to French in the late 1800s. Now it’s officially Dutch/French bi-lingual, where most people speak French, but a lot of people speak Belgium’s third official language, German, as well as English.
Brussels started life as a little rural settlement on the river Senne, growing to become an important European urban hub. These days it’s an international centre for politics and diplomacy. But this city is also loved for its wonderful food: the waffles, the chocolate, the fries – and of course countless beautiful beers.
Some of Brussels’ best-loved historical and architectural landmarks have been declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites, with the magnificent Grand-Place square, Manneken Pis, Atomium, La Monnaie and amazing Museums of Art and History top tourist destinations. This is the world’s comic strip capital as well, featuring massive cartoon wall murals to admire.
The area where Brussels stands today was occupied way back in the Stone Age and some of the city place names hark back to the megaliths, dolmens and standing stones they left behind. The Romans also occupied the region. After they left it fell under Frankish rule. More than 80 museums tell the long and complex story of this fantastic place, one of the EU’s greenest capitals with more than 8000 hectares of natural space to relax in.
As you can imagine, a guided travel experience lets you into Brussels’ most interesting secrets. As well as standard attractions like the Grand Place, Belgian Comic Strip Centre, Royal Museum of Fine Arts and Coudenberg Palace Archaeological Site there’s a wealth of unusual secrets and hidden attractions to discover with your guide.
Amsterdam – free-thinking, friendly and open
Amsterdam sits on what used to be soggy peatland. And that means it wasn’t built until a lot later than the other capitals we’re looking at. While farmers settled here three thousand years ago on the banks of the prehistoric IJ river, creating an important centre from the late Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman age, it took technology to drain the land so it was dry enough to build a modern city. Once the water issues were brought under control, Amsterdam as we know it appeared.
The Dutch Golden Age in the 1600s saw it become a major international port, an important centre for finance and trade, and a hub for artistic talent. To this day it’s known and loved as a liberal city famed for tolerance and openness.
These days the city, known as the Venice of the North, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, sitting at the mouth of the dammed Amstel River. Amsterdam is a wonderland of historic canals and museums including the awesome Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum. Visit the Concertgebouw concert hall, Anne Frank House, Scheepvaartmuseum, red light district and cannabis coffee shops, sample the legendary nightlife and world-class clubs, and wander the beautiful canal-side streets with their tall, thin houses.
Like the rest of our featured cities, hidden Amsterdam is well worth exploring and guided travel is the best way to discover it. No wasted time or effort, just a constant stream of the marvellous things you most want to see.
Berlin – Independent, funky, warm-hearted
The earliest human settlements in the place Berlin now stands date back to 60,000 BCE, quite a history. The ancient Maglemosian people lived here 11,000 years ago and 2000 BCE saw a multitude of large settlements developing along the River Spree and River Havel. In around 500 BCE Germanic tribes arrived and settled, including the Semnones and the Burgundians, then Slavic tribes like the Hevelli and Sprevane arrived. Now it’s the capital and the largest city in Germany.
Berlin has been built along the banks of the Spree and it’s another wonderfully green capital with an impressive third of it dedicated to forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals and lakes, lovely to relax in. It offers more than 130 museums and over 400 art galleries, making it the ideal candidate for guided travel adventures. Museum Island itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with its own collection of amazing museums packed with treasures: Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Pergamon Museum, and the Bode Museum.
Berlin was flattened in WW2 and you can still see the scars. In some places they’re still rebuilding. The Berlin Wall has gone too, but you can track the route it once took – through the middle of streets, cutting city squares in half, separating families and friends. Chunks of wall have been preserved for posterity. And small green spaces throughout the centre are home to strange buildings constructed from waste materials, with their own tiny urban gardens filled with vegetables and flowers. It’s just fascinating.
Prague – cultural, artistic, Bohemian
Prague is a popular political, cultural, and economic hub with an ancient history as impressive as the rest of the places we’ve featured. The Czech name Praha comes from the Slavic word for ford or rapid, hinting at the origin of the city at a crossing point on the Vltava River, but the area has been settled by humans since early Paleolithic times.
Packed with lovely Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings, it’s no surprise this was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia as well as home to a gang of Holy Roman Emperors. It has seen more than its fair share of conflict, surviving the Habsburg monarchy, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bohemian Reformation, Protestant Reformation, Thirty Years’ War, two World Wars and post-war Communism.
Despite all the violence it remains stuffed with cultural attractions including Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, the Old Town Square with its ancient astronomical clock, Jewish Quarter, Petřín hill and Vyšehrad. No wonder the city centre has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You have at least ten internationally renowned major museums to explore plus countless art galleries.
There’s the National Theatre and Estates Theatre, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra’s home, Rudolfinum, plus the Prague State Opera’s official home, the Smetana Theatre. Museum-wise you’re in for a treat with the National Museum, Museum of the Capital City of Prague, Jewish Museum, Alfons Mucha Museum, African-Prague Museum, Museum of Decorative Arts, plus more museums and countless brilliant art galleries.
This is a great destination for festivals as well, with the Prague Spring International Music Festival, Autumn International Music Festival, International Organ Festival, Dvořák Prague International Music Festival and Prague International Jazz Festival to enjoy. There are film festivals and writing festivals, folklore festivals and a Summer Shakespeare Festival along with a Fringe Festival, the World Roma Festival, and a zillion fantastic bars and restaurants serving the city’s famous beers. How to find your way through it all to pinpoint the things you’ll enjoy most? The same goes: grab a guided travel tour!
We hope our guide has inspired you to discover Europe’s finest cities. Your only issue is which city to choose. There are numerous guided travelling options to book in all of them.
Follow Us