How many countries are in Europe?
Europe has around forty-four countries, depending on how you count, from Russia, the biggest country in the world, much of it in Asia, to the Vatican City, the smallest. Twenty-seven belong to the European Union, and twenty-one of those share the euro as their money. In most of them, travellers can cross borders without showing a passport, because of an agreement named after the village of Schengen in Luxembourg, where it was signed in 1985.
Europe's languages are just as varied. Most come from one ancient family, but a few do not: FINLAND, ESTONIA and HUNGARY speak languages related to each other and unrelated to their neighbours, and the Basque language, spoken on the border of SPAIN and FRANCE, is not known to be related to any other language on Earth.
The oldest friendship
PORTUGAL and England signed a treaty of friendship in 1373, confirmed by the Treaty of Windsor in 1386, and it has never been broken, making it the oldest alliance in the world still in force. The two countries have been on the same side in wars ever since, and the alliance was used as recently as the Second World War and the 1982 Falklands War.
Some European countries are very new. SLOVAKIA and the Czech Republic split peacefully in 1993, and CROATIA and SERBIA were among the countries formed when Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s. ALBANIA, under a secretive leader in the second half of the 1900s, built well over a hundred thousand small concrete bunkers across the countryside, fearing an invasion that never came. Many are still there, and some have been turned into cafés and homes.
Small countries with strange arrangements
Andorra, high in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, has two heads of state at once: the President of France and a Spanish bishop, the Bishop of Urgell, who share the title of co-prince, an arrangement dating back to 1278. Luxembourg is the world's last grand duchy, ruled by a grand duke, and in 2020 it became the first country to make all its buses, trams and trains free for everyone.
Iceland's parliament, the Althing, first met in the open air at a place called Thingvellir in the year 930, and it is often called the oldest parliament in the world still running. In Romania, Bran Castle in Transylvania is sold to tourists as Dracula's castle, although the novel's author, Bram Stoker, never went there, or anywhere in Romania at all.
Countries in the grid
GERMANY has nine neighbours, the most of any country lying entirely in Europe, and our Oktoberfest page covers one of its best-known festivals. ESTONIA was the first country in the world to let people vote online in a national election, in 2005. NORWAY is lined with deep fjords, as our landforms page explains. ITALY, GREECE, POLAND, SWEDEN, AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, IRELAND, DENMARK, ROMANIA and BULGARIA complete the grid. Belgium has three official languages, Dutch, French and German, and its capital, Brussels, is home to the main offices of the European Union.