The Most Beautiful Islands in Europe

23 places in 10 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Capri

   Isola di Capri

   Italy · 32.4 km from Naples40.550° N 14.233° E

   

   The Romans started it. Augustus developed Capri as a private retreat, and his successor Tiberius, according to Tacitus, built twelve villas here; in AD 27 he moved to the island for good and governed the empire from it until his death ten years later. The ruins of Villa Jovis, the largest of his residences, sit on the island's eastern headland and are among the best-preserved Roman villas in Italy. Below the town, the Gardens of Augustus look down on the hairpin bends of the Via Krupp footpath, often closed because of rockfall.

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2. 02 Sveti Stefan

   Montenegro · 38.7 km from Podgorica42.256° N 18.891° E

   

   It began as a fortified refuge of the Paštrovići clan, who placed themselves under Venetian protection in 1423. Local tradition says the walls were paid for with loot taken from Ottoman ships during the siege of Kotor in 1539, and that each of the Paštrovići families had a house inside. By the 19th century about 400 people lived here, but emigration and war emptied it, and by 1954 only twenty remained. The Yugoslav government moved them to the mainland and turned the whole village into a luxury hotel whose guest list ran from Sophia Loren and Kirk Douglas to Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, who played chess here.

   Did you know? The story that Ottoman loot paid for the walls was recorded by the 19th-century Montenegrin writer Stjepan Mitrov Ljubiša.

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3. 03 Ionian Islands

   Επτάνησα

   Greece37.800° N 20.700° E

   

   That layering is easiest to read in Corfu Town, whose Old Town was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007: a Venetian citadel cut off from the town by a sea-filled moat, narrow paved lanes called kantounia, and a broad esplanade between fortress and houses. The landscape set pieces lie further south. On Lefkada, Porto Katsiki sits at the foot of a concave pale cliff on the west coast; its name, "goat port", is said to recall a time when only goats could reach it. On Kefalonia, Myrtos is a long arc of white marble cobbles between the mountains of Agia Dynati and Kalon Oros, where waves grind the stone fine enough to tint the water turquoise.

   Did you know? According to myth, the Ionian Sea is named after Io, who swam across it; it is unrelated to Ionia in Anatolia, which Greek spells with a different letter.

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4. 04 Lanzarote

   Spain · 12 km from Arrecife29.035° N 13.635° W

   

   What makes Lanzarote unusual among volcanic islands is that one artist got to decide, almost single-handedly, how the island would present that landscape to the world.

   Did you know? In parts of Timanfaya the ground reaches 100 to 600 °C only 13 m down, hot enough that water poured into a shaft bursts back out as steam almost instantly.

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5. 05 Santorini

   Σαντορίνη

   Greece36.415° N 25.433° E

   

   That same eruption preserved Akrotiri on the south coast, a prosperous Bronze Age town whose multi-storey houses, drains and streets were sealed under ash before the blast. Its wall paintings — scenes of daily life, ritual, animals and ships — are among the most vivid images to survive from the Aegean Bronze Age. Much quieter is Ancient Thera, the ruins of a later Greek town on the ridge of Mesa Vouno, almost 400 metres above the sea, with views down both coasts.

   Did you know? The Bronze Age eruption has often been proposed as a possible inspiration for the legend of Atlantis, though archaeology does not support the story itself.

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6. 06 Lofoten

   Norway68.333° N 14.666° E

   

   For more than a thousand years these waters have hosted one of the great cod fisheries of Europe. Each winter the fish come down from the Barents Sea to spawn here, and the trade in dried cod once ran south through Bergen under the Hanseatic League. The fishing villages are the human face of the landscape. Reine, on Moskenesøya, has been a trading post since 1743; its red cabins on a promontory beneath sheer peaks are the view most often printed from the archipelago, usually taken from Reinebringen, 448 m above the village. Nusfjord, on the southern shore of Flakstadøya, is a tight harbour hemmed in by rock, and Henningsvær on Austvågøya is the islands' main base for rock climbing.

   Did you know? The Røst Reef, west of the island of Røst, is the largest deep-water coral reef known in the world.

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7. 07 Our Lady of the Rocks

   Montenegro42.487° N 18.689° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   That tradition, called Fašinada, is not a historical footnote — it's still practiced every single year. On 22 July, a procession of boats sails out from Perast and drops stones onto the same spot the original islet grew from, a ritual that has run essentially unbroken since the 1400s and keeps the island technically still under construction after 570-odd years.

   Did you know? The church holds 68 paintings by the 17th-century baroque painter Tripo Kokolja.

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8. 08 Bass Rock

   United Kingdom56.080° N 2.640° W

   

   The rock is the plug of a volcano active some 340 million years ago, related to North Berwick Law on the mainland and to Arthur's Seat and the Castle Rock in Edinburgh; James Hutton was the first to recognise it as an igneous intrusion. Its human history begins with Saint Baldred, the 8th-century "Apostle of the Lothians", who kept a hermitage here; the ruined chapel halfway up the slope stands over the cell associated with him. For almost six centuries the Lauder family held the island and built a fortress just above the landing, a curtain wall with round bastions climbing the rock.

   Did you know? Gannets, known in Scots as solan geese, were once harvested here for their eggs and chicks; in 1850 almost 2,000 birds were taken from the rock.

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9. 09 Vulcano

   Isola di Vulcano

   Italy38.404° N 14.966° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The main event is the Gran Cratere, the rim of the Fossa cone behind the port. Its last eruption, from 1888 to 1890, was studied by the geologist Giuseppe Mercalli, and the explosive, cannon-like blasts he described gave science the term "Vulcanian eruption". A marked trail climbs about 390 m to the rim, where fumaroles steam around the crater — sulphur was mined on the island from Roman times until the late 19th century; allow roughly three hours there and back, start early in summer, and bring water.

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10. 10 Skellig Michael

    Ireland51.771° N 10.541° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Life on the rock ran on deliberate scarcity: seabirds and whatever could be coaxed out of two tiny cultivated patches were about it for food, and the physical difficulty of simply staying there was treated as part of the point, a form of prayer as much as survival. The community held on for centuries — the death of one monk, Suibhni of Scelig, is recorded as far back as the 8th century — before a colder, stormier climate and shifts within the Irish Church pushed the last residents off the island by around the 13th century, relocating to Ballinskelligs on the mainland.

    Did you know? Separate from the main monastery, a tiny hermitage clings to ledges near the South Peak, reached through a chimney-like cleft known as the Needle's Eye.

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11. 11 La Gomera

    Spain28.115° N 17.225° W

    

    The summit plateau catches moisture from the trade-wind clouds and is often wrapped in mist. Here survives laurisilva, a dense laurel rainforest, protected as Garajonay National Park, a World Heritage Site since 1986 and the first in the Canaries. The whole island became a biosphere reserve in 2012. Among its rarities is the La Gomera giant lizard, thought extinct until a small population was found on the cliffs in 1999. Lower down, terraces cut into the slopes carry vineyards, orchards and banana groves watered by old channels.

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12. 12 Mykines

    Faroe Islands62.106° N 7.597° W

    

    Mykines belongs to the oldest part of the Faroes, built some 60 million years ago from successive flows of fluid lava. Softer layers of volcanic tuff between the basalt sheets have eroded faster, leaving ledges that make some of the richest bird cliffs anywhere. The island's highest point, Knúkur, reaches 560 metres. In the valley of Korkadalur on the north side stand great basalt columns known as the Stone-wood. To the west lies the islet of Mykineshólmur, about 1 km long, joined to the main island by a footbridge some 40 metres long over the narrow strait of Holmgjógv; a lighthouse was built at its western end in 1909.

    Did you know? In 1970 a Fokker F27 airliner crashed on Mykines; eight people died and twenty-six survived.

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13. 13 Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore

    Isola Bella

    Italy · 36 km from Lugano45.895° N 8.527° E

    

    Until 1632 it was little more than a rocky outcrop with a fishing village. That year Count Carlo III Borromeo began transforming it into a residence for his wife, Isabella D'Adda, whose name, softened to Isola Bella, the island still carries. The Milanese architect Angelo Crivelli laid out the first plans for both palace and gardens. Work stopped in the middle of the century when plague swept the Duchy of Milan, and was taken up again by Carlo's sons, Cardinal Giberto III and Vitaliano VI. The architect Carlo Fontana brought the palace to completion, and the gardens, finished under Carlo IV Borromeo Arese, were inaugurated in 1671.

    Did you know? Before 1632 the rocky islet held a tiny fishing village with two churches, one of them, San Vittore, dating back to the 11th century.

    More about Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore →

14. 14 Isle of Skye

    United Kingdom57.350° N 6.300° W

    

    At the centre stand the Cuillin. The Black Cuillin, of dark gabbro and basalt, form the most serious mountain ground in Scotland: a jagged ridge with twelve Munros whose full traverse can take fifteen to twenty hours, the Inaccessible Pinnacle — the only Scottish summit that demands technical rock climbing — and Sgùrr Alasdair, at 993 m the highest peak on any Scottish island. To the east the Red Cuillin are granite, weathered into rounded domes with long scree flanks. To the north, the Trotternish peninsula is a sheet of basalt lying on weaker sediments that has slid away in the longest landslip in Great Britain.

    Did you know? Stone tools found at South Cuidrach are thought to be roughly 11,000 to 12,500 years old, the earliest evidence of people on the island.

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15. 15 La Palma

    Spain28.660° N 17.860° W

    

    At the heart of the north lies the Caldera de Taburiente, a vast amphitheatre some nine kilometres across and up to 1,500 metres deep, ringed by cliffs and drained by a single gorge, the Barranco de las Angustias. Protected as a national park since 1954, it is where the German geologist Leopold von Buch, visiting in 1815, helped bring the Spanish word caldera into the language of science. South of it runs the Cumbre Vieja, a young ridge of cones and lava fields that is among the most active volcanic zones of the archipelago.

    Did you know? The Caldera de Taburiente, about nine kilometres wide, has been a Spanish national park since 1954.

    More about La Palma →

16. 16 São Miguel Island

    Portugal · 15.8 km from Ponta Delgada37.800° N 25.500° W

    

    At the western end, the caldera of Sete Cidades shelters a twin lake split by a narrow strait and crossed by a bridge; one half reads as green, the other as blue. Local legend tells of a princess and a shepherd forbidden to marry, whose tears filled the two lakes in the colours of their eyes. 5 km, its shore at 575 m, enclosed by steep crater walls rising to around 949 m, with no buildings allowed around it.

    Did you know? Tea took over after blight destroyed the island's orange groves; in 1878 two specialists from Macau were brought in to teach islanders how to produce it.

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17. 17 Es Vedrà

    Isla de Es Vedrá

    Spain38.867° N 1.199° E

    

    Es Vedrà is made largely of Mesozoic limestone. It is a fragment of the same mountain system that gave rise to the Balearic Islands, an outlying offshoot of the Betic ranges of southern Spain, separated from the main island by tectonic movement and erosion; the smaller islet of Es Vedranell lies alongside it. The rock and the surrounding sea belong to the Cala d'Hort nature reserve. Its cliffs are a refuge for Eleonora's falcon, an endangered migratory bird of prey, and for a subspecies of the Ibiza wall lizard. Popular belief credits Es Vedrà with unusual magnetic properties, but there is no geological basis for the claim.

    Did you know? The island covers only about 60 hectares, yet supports a dozen plant species endemic to the region, including wild onions, sea lavenders and Micromeria.

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18. 18 Isola Bella, Taormina

    Isola Bella

    Italy37.850° N 15.300° E

    

    In 1806 King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies gave the island to Taormina. In 1890 it was bought by Florence Trevelyan, an Englishwoman who had settled in the town; she built a small house facing the sea and planted rare and exotic species that flourished there. After her it passed through several hands, and in 1954 the brothers Leone and Emilio Bosurgi, owners of a Messina citrus company, bought it and added a cluster of small residences and a tiny pool hidden among rocks and plants. When their company collapsed, the island was put up for auction in the 1980s, but the Sicilian authorities declared it a protected monument, and in 1990 the Region of Sicily bought it.

    Did you know? Trevelyan was a pioneer of bird habitat protection in Italy, decades before the Italian bird protection league was founded in 1965.

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19. 19 Delos

    Δήλος

    Greece · 30.5 km from Ermoupolis37.389° N 25.269° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The sanctuary of Apollo grew into a dense cluster of temples, treasuries and porticoes. Among them are the Doric Temple of the Delians, the Oikos of the Naxians with its long hall and single row of Ionic columns, and the base of a colossal Naxian kouros. The island's sanctity shaped its history: a purification in 426 BC decreed that no one should be born or buried on Delos. In 454 BC the treasury of the Delian League, kept on the island, was moved to Athens. When Rome declared Delos a free port in 166 BC, it became a booming trading town and a centre of the slave trade, with merchant houses, agoras and sanctuaries of foreign gods such as the Temple of Isis.

    Did you know? When Athens cleared all graves from Delos, two tombs of the Hyperborean Maidens were spared because they were honoured with a hero cult.

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20. 20 Tindhólmur

    Faroe Islands · 32.6 km from Tórshavn62.078° N 7.435° W

    

    What the legend doesn't need to explain is why nobody moved back: Tindhólmur has no harbour, no flat ground worth farming at scale, and a sheer basalt face on its southern side that makes it one of the more striking silhouettes in the Faroe archipelago, especially at sunset when boat tours time their passes to catch the light. Its closest neighbours are Drangarnir, a pair of free-standing sea stacks rising straight out of the water between Tindhólmur and Vágar that have become one of the most photographed formations in the islands.

    Did you know? Each of its five peaks has a name: Ytsti, Arni, Lítli, Breiði and Bogni, meaning Farthest, Eagle, Small, Broad and Bent.

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21. 21 Ilhéu de Vila Franca

    Portugal · 20.1 km from Ponta Delgada37.706° N 25.444° W

    

    The islet is small, about five to six hectares, and its highest point reaches roughly 62 metres above the sea. The circular crater basin measures about 150 metres across and is up to about 20 metres deep. The rock walls are cut by vertical fractures that give the islet its ribbed, sculpted look, and off its southern tip stands a separate volcanic stack, the Farilhão, about 32 metres high. For centuries the islet was private: until 1982 a single family owned it, keeping vineyards on the higher ground and making wine for local use, and the terraces of those abandoned vines can still be traced on the slopes.

    Did you know? According to a legend recorded by the chronicler Gaspar Frutuoso, the first Portuguese to land here held Mass and then heard demons crying that the island was theirs.

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22. 22 Lavezzi Islands

    Îles Lavezzi

    France41.341° N 9.254° E

    

    Of the two main islands, Cavallo, about 112 hectares, is the only inhabited one; Lavezzu, about 66 hectares, gives the group its name and carries a lighthouse first lit in 1874. People came here long before: archaeologists have found Neolithic rock shelters, traces of a Roman harbour and the remains of a 7th-century chapel. The best-known event in the islands' history is a tragedy. On the night of 15 to 16 February 1855 the French frigate Sémillante, sailing from Toulon with sailors and soldiers bound for the Crimean War, was driven onto the rocks of Lavezzu in a storm and fog. Everyone aboard, roughly seven hundred people, was lost.

    Did you know? The Sémillante was a 60-gun frigate whose keel was laid at Lorient in 1827, though she was not launched until 1841.

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23. 23 Lítla Dímun

    Faroe Islands61.633° N 6.709° W

    

    The sheep on it today are not, as many retellings assume, a living relic of some ancient unbroken bloodline. The islet's original sheep — a small, dark, short-woolled feral breed closely related to the primitive Soay sheep of Scotland's St Kilda — was hunted to extinction; the last of them were shot in the 1860s. The sheep grazing there now are ordinary domestic Faroese sheep, introduced afterward to replace a population that had already been wiped out, a distinction that gets lost in most casual accounts of the island.

    Did you know? In 1918 the Danish schooner Caspe, carrying a cargo of salt, was driven ashore here, and its six crew survived 17 days stranded on the island.

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