The Most Beautiful Squares in Europe

19 places in 8 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Place de la Concorde

   France · 2.5 km from Paris48.866° N 2.321° E

   

   The Revolution gave the square its darkest chapter. The king's statue was pulled down in 1792 and melted, the square was renamed Place de la Révolution, and the guillotine was set up here. Louis XVI was executed on the square in January 1793 and Marie Antoinette that October; Danton, Lavoisier and Robespierre followed. Of about 2,500 people guillotined in Paris during the Revolution, some 1,100 died here. The name Concorde, "harmony", was given in 1795 as a gesture of reconciliation, lost under the Restoration and restored in 1830.

   More about Place de la Concorde →

2. 02 Piazza Navona

   Italy · 0.7 km from Rome41.899° N 12.473° E

   

   The square as we see it is the work of one papacy. Innocent X, whose family palace faced the arena, turned it into a Baroque showpiece in the mid-seventeenth century. At the centre rises Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers of 1651, crowned by the Obelisk of Domitian, which was brought over in pieces from the Circus of Maxentius. Behind it stands the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, the work of Borromini together with Girolamo and Carlo Rainaldi. The Palazzo Pamphilj next door holds a gallery designed by Borromini and frescoed by Pietro da Cortona.

   Did you know? The name Navona evolved from in agone, the Latin phrase for the games over the centuries.

   More about Piazza Navona →

3. 03 Main Market Square, Kraków

   Rynek Główny w Krakowie

   Poland · 1.5 km from Kraków50.062° N 19.937° E

   

   The square is not an empty frame but a room full of furniture. Down the middle runs the Cloth Hall, the Sukiennice, a long Gothic market hall rebuilt in the Renaissance style in 1555, when it gained its crest of an arcaded attic parapet lined with carved grotesque masks. Beside it stands the lone Town Hall Tower, all that remains of the old town hall. In one corner, the small domed church of St Adalbert goes back to the eleventh century and is older than the square itself.

   Did you know? The ground level has risen over the centuries, in places by more than five metres, burying the medieval surface beneath later layers.

   More about Main Market Square, Kraków →

4. 04 Piazza del Duomo, Pisa

   Piazza dei Miracoli

   Italy · 0.5 km from Pisa43.723° N 10.395° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The cathedral came first, begun in 1064 to designs by the architect Buscheto, whose tomb is set into the facade. Its front is layered with open arcaded galleries, and worshippers have traditionally entered not through the main doors but through the Porta di San Ranieri facing the tower, whose bronze panels Bonanno Pisano made around 1180. Inside, beneath a gilded ceiling bearing the Medici arms, stand striped marble arcades, granite columns taken from Palermo in 1063, an apse mosaic of Christ in Majesty in which Cimabue worked the head of St John in 1302, and Giovanni Pisano's carved pulpit of 1302–1310.

   Did you know? Before engineers intervened around 1990 the tower leaned about 5.5 degrees, far more than the roughly one degree it had when completed.

   More about Piazza del Duomo, Pisa →

5. 05 Piazza del Campo

   Italy · 1.5 km from Siena43.318° N 11.331° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The square grew from an open space on a slope where the three hill communities that merged to form Siena met. It served as market, meeting place and arena long before it was formalised. Medieval Siena was a rich, self-governing city-state and Florence's great rival, and its government made the Campo a statement of civic pride. The paving was completed in 1349, and its nine sections are traditionally linked to the Nine, the council that governed the city from 1292 to 1355, at the height of its prosperity.

   Did you know? Siena has 17 contrade, but only ten run in each Palio: the seven absent from the previous race, plus three drawn by lot.

   More about Piazza del Campo →

6. 06 Place Vendôme

   France · 2 km from Paris48.867° N 2.329° E

   

   At its centre stood François Girardon's equestrian statue of Louis XIV, unveiled in 1699 and believed to be the first large modern equestrian statue cast in one piece; the Revolution pulled it down in 1792. Napoleon replaced it between 1806 and 1810 with the Vendôme Column, about 44 metres high, wrapped in a spiral of 425 bronze relief plates cast from cannon captured from the armies of Europe. It has had a life of its own. The Paris Commune toppled it on 16 May 1871 at the urging of the painter Gustave Courbet, who was later ordered to pay for its reconstruction; it went back up in the 1870s, crowned by a statue of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor.

   More about Place Vendôme →

7. 07 Saint Peter's Square

   Piazza San Pietro

   Vatican City · 2.1 km from Rome41.902° N 12.457° E

   

   The oval connects to the basilica through a trapezoidal space whose sides draw closer toward the church. That shape was largely forced on Bernini by the buildings already there, yet it has been praised ever since as a masterstroke, subtly changing the perspective for anyone walking out of the basilica. Bernini also balanced the square: a granite fountain by Maderno of 1613 already stood on one side, and in 1675 he added a matching one on the other, making the two fountains appear as the foci of the oval.

   Did you know? Bernini's colonnades hold roughly 280 columns and 88 pilasters, crowned by 140 larger-than-life statues of saints.

   More about Saint Peter's Square →

8. 08 Place Stanislas, Nancy

   France · 1.7 km from Nancy48.694° N 6.183° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Its patron was Stanisław Leszczyński, twice-deposed king of Poland, who was given the duchies of Lorraine and Bar for life in 1737 and whose daughter was married to Louis XV of France. The square was his homage to his son-in-law, and a statue of Louis XV stood at its centre until the Revolution pulled it down. Since 1831 the plinth has carried a bronze of Stanislas himself by Georges Jacquot. The ensemble had a purpose beyond flattery: it stitched together Nancy's medieval old town and the new town laid out in the seventeenth century, with the Arc Héré, a triumphal arch, opening north onto the long tree-lined Place de la Carrière.

   Did you know? The square has changed its name repeatedly: Place Royale, Place du Peuple, Place Napoléon, Royale again, and finally Place Stanislas.

   More about Place Stanislas, Nancy →

9. 09 Place des Vosges

   France · 1 km from Paris48.856° N 2.366° E

   

   The architecture is what makes the square sing. The facades are of red brick framed by pale stone quoins, above ground-floor arcades carried on square pillars, and topped with steep slate roofs pierced by dormers. The uniformity is broken only by two taller pavilions facing each other across the garden — the Pavillon du Roi and the Pavillon de la Reine. Walking the arcades, with light falling through the arches onto the stone floor and the garden glimpsed between the pillars, is one of the great quiet pleasures of Paris.

   Did you know? Henri IV first planned a silk manufactory on the site, but his ministers persuaded him to build a luxury residential square instead.

   More about Place des Vosges →

10. 10 Grand-Place

    Belgium · 2 km from Brussels50.847° N 4.353° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On the south side stands the Town Hall, built in stages between 1401 and 1455. Its openwork spire rises about 96 m and is topped by a 2.7 m gilded statue of St Michael slaying the devil. Opposite, the King's House was built for the dukes of Brabant, although no king ever lived there; its Dutch name, Broodhuis or "bread house", recalls the bread market that stood on the site. Its present form is a romantic neo-Gothic rebuilding of 1874–96, and it houses the Brussels City Museum. The square's history includes darker moments: in 1568 the Counts of Egmont and Horn were beheaded in front of it, an event that helped spark the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain.

    Did you know? The Town Hall is subtly asymmetrical; according to legend, its architect leapt from the tower on discovering the 'mistake'.

    More about Grand-Place →

11. 11 Piazza del Campidoglio

    Italy · 0.5 km from Rome41.893° N 12.483° E

    

    The approach is part of the effect. The Cordonata, a broad stepped ramp of Michelangelo's design, climbs gently from the street, and at its top the colossal ancient figures of Castor and Pollux stand beside their horses, flanked by the so-called Trophies of Marius and the first milestone of the Appian Way. Ahead rises the Palazzo Senatorio, Rome's city hall, built over the massive vaults of the ancient Tabularium, with Michelangelo's double staircase in front; reclining figures of the Nile and the Tiber lie at its foot, and a small figure of the goddess Roma in porphyry and marble fills the central niche.

    Did you know? The two existing palaces met at an angle of about 80 degrees, and Michelangelo aligned his new façades to that skewed plan instead of demolishing them.

    More about Piazza del Campidoglio →

12. 12 Praça do Comércio, Lisbon

    Portugal · 2.1 km from Lisbon38.708° N 9.136° W

    

    From the early 16th century the riverbank here was the seat of royal power: King Manuel I moved his residence to the Ribeira Palace on this site, and around it grew the docks, shipyards and offices, such as the Casa da Índia, that handled Portugal's trade with Africa, Asia and the Americas. On 1 November 1755 an earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fire, levelled most of Lisbon and swept away the palace together with its great library.

    Did you know? The Cais das Colunas, marble steps at the river's edge, served for centuries as the ceremonial landing place for dignitaries arriving in Lisbon.

    More about Praça do Comércio, Lisbon →

13. 13 Plaza de España

    Spain · 3.2 km from Seville37.377° N 5.987° W

    

    The style is Spanish Regionalism at full volume — Renaissance and Baroque revival, neo-Mudéjar brickwork and a touch of the 1920s mixed without apology — but the real subject is Seville's own ceramics. Along the foot of the building run 48 tiled alcoves with benches, one for each of the other Spanish provinces in alphabetical order, each with a map, the provincial arms and a painted scene from its history; people still hunt for their home province and sit in it for a photograph. Above them a row of ceramic medallions shows figures from Spanish history, and glazed tiles cover balustrades, lamp posts and handrails.

    Did you know? Above the provincial benches runs a row of 52 ceramic medallions with relief portraits of illustrious figures from Spanish history.

    More about Plaza de España →

14. 14 Piazza dell'Anfiteatro

    Italy · 16.3 km from Pisa43.845° N 10.506° E

    

    The amphitheatre was built in the Roman town of Luca, generally dated to the second century AD; at its height it is said to have held some 10,000 spectators on around eighteen tiers of seats. After antiquity its masonry was not demolished but absorbed: houses, storerooms, a salt depot, a powder magazine and a prison were gradually wedged into the arena and built against the old arcades. In the Middle Ages the space was known as the "parlascio", a corruption of the Latin word for amphitheatre that took on the sense of a place where citizens gathered to talk.

    Did you know? Its outer wall rose in two tiers of arches, about 6.6 metres and 4.85 metres high, giving a facade more than 13 metres tall.

    More about Piazza dell'Anfiteatro →

15. 15 Piazza della Signoria

    Italy · 1.2 km from Florence43.770° N 11.256° E

    

    The square is ruled by the Palazzo Vecchio, the massive, crenellated Romanesque fortress-palace that served as the town hall and seat of government. Beside it opens the Loggia dei Lanzi, a set of wide arches on Corinthian capitals that has become one of the finest open-air sculpture galleries anywhere. Under its vaults stand Benvenuto Cellini's bronze Perseus holding up the head of Medusa, finished in 1554, and Giambologna's Abduction of a Sabine Woman of 1583, a spiralling marble group meant to be walked around, with no single front. The Medici lions guard the steps.

    Did you know? Excavations in the 1980s uncovered a Roman theatre, baths, a textile-dyeing workshop and a huge 5th-century basilica, and even traces of a Neolithic settlement.

    More about Piazza della Signoria →

16. 16 Place de la Bourse

    France · 2.4 km from Bordeaux44.841° N 0.570° W

    

    The idea came from Claude Boucher, the royal intendant appointed in 1720, who wanted to break through the city's decaying medieval walls and give Bordeaux a dignified face towards the river. Some twenty houses and ten stalls were cleared and about 150 metres of rampart came down. The first royal architect, Jacques Gabriel, drew the ordered facades, consciously echoing the Place Vendôme in Paris, designed by his relative and teacher Jules Hardouin-Mansart. A bronze equestrian statue of Louis XV by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne was unveiled at the centre in August 1743.

    Did you know? Around 900 nozzles hidden in the paving can replace the water film with an artificial mist rising up to about two metres high.

    More about Place de la Bourse →

17. 17 Plaza Mayor

    Plaza Mayor de Salamanca

    Spain · 0.8 km from Salamanca40.965° N 5.664° W

    

    The square replaced a much larger, informal marketplace that had grown up outside a gate in the town walls next to the church of San Martín. Pushed by the royal magistrate Rodrigo Caballero, the city decided to build a regular plaza in the manner of Madrid's, and the design went to the architect Alberto de Churriguera, of the family that gave its name to the exuberant Spanish late-baroque style. Work began in 1729 with the Royal Pavilion on the east side, which also served as a retaining wall to level the sloping ground, and the San Martín pavilion on the south.

    Did you know? The old marketplace it replaced was almost four times larger, spreading over today's Market, Corrillo and Poeta Iglesias squares, and was praised as the biggest square in Christendom.

    More about Plaza Mayor →

18. 18 Great Market

    Rynek Wielki

    Poland50.717° N 23.252° E

    

    Zamość was founded in 1580 by Jan Zamoyski, Grand Chancellor and Hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who wanted an ideal city on the trade route between western Europe and the Black Sea. He commissioned the Paduan architect Bernardo Morando, who laid out the town on an anthropomorphic scheme: the Zamoyski palace as its head, Grodzka Street as its spine crossing the Great Market from east to west, and the Salt and Water markets opening to the north and south. Unusually, the town hall does not stand in the middle of the square but on its northern side, pushed slightly forward, so as not to compete with the founder's palace.

    Did you know? Because it was laid out by an Italian architect on Italian models, Zamość has often been called the new Padua.

    More about Great Market →

19. 19 Náměstí Zachariáše z Hradce

    Czech Republic · 25.8 km from Jihlava49.184° N 15.454° E

    

    The square takes its name from Zachariáš of Hradec (1526/7–1589), the humanist nobleman who presided over the town's golden age. The lords of Hradec had acquired Telč in 1339 and built a castle, fortifications and Gothic houses around the market place; a fire in 1386 destroyed the western half of the square together with the church and town hall. In the mid-16th century Zachariáš had the medieval castle rebuilt in Renaissance style, and the townspeople followed his lead, remodelling their Gothic houses with arcades and ornamented façades. Later generations reworked many of the gables, mostly in Baroque taste, so the houses share a common Renaissance form while each has a front of its own.

    Did you know? Emperor Charles IV pawned the royal estate of Telč in 1335 and in 1339 swapped it with Henry of Hradec for the border fortress of Bánov.

    More about Náměstí Zachariáše z Hradce →