The Most Remarkable Hydroelectric Power Stations in Europe
5 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most remarkable hydroelectric power stations in Europe are Vemork (Norway), Olidan Hydroelectric Power Station (Sweden) and Heimbach Hydroelectric Power Station (Germany). The list covers 5 hydroelectric power stations in 4 countries. Norway has the most, with 2. Last updated 13 October 2026.
The first generation of hydroelectric stations was built when electricity was still a marvel, and the companies behind them wanted buildings that looked worthy of it. Between about 1900 and the 1920s, architects in Norway, Sweden, Germany and Italy gave turbine halls the form of castles, temples and Art Nouveau palaces, set beside waterfalls and rivers in some of Europe's most dramatic valleys.
Vemork, above the Rjukan gorge in Norway, was the largest hydroelectric station in the world when it opened in 1911 and is now the Norwegian Industrial Workers' Museum. Nearby in Rjukan, the Såheim station of 1915, designed by Thorvald Astrup and Olaf Nordhagen, gives the town a monumental, castle-like hall. Olidan in Trollhättan, opened in 1910 as Sweden's first large hydroelectric station, harnesses the falls of the Göta River. The Heimbach station in the German Eifel, opened in 1905, is a jewel of Jugendstil with decorated machine halls. The Taccani station at Trezzo sull'Adda in Lombardy, designed by Gaetano Moretti, sits on the river below the ruins of a medieval castle.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vemork | Hydroelectric power station | Norway | |
| 2 | Olidan Hydroelectric Power Station | Hydroelectric power station | Sweden | |
| 3 | Heimbach Hydroelectric Power Station | Hydroelectric power station | Germany | |
| 4 | Såheim Power Station | Hydroelectric power station | Norway | |
| 5 | Taccani Hydroelectric Power Station | Hydroelectric power station | Italy |
01 Vemork
Norway59.872° N 8.494° E
Image by Moellenborg from Pixabay In 1934 a plant at Vemork began producing heavy water, a by-product of hydrogen production that no other factory in the world then made in quantity. During the German occupation of Norway it became one of the most important targets of the Second World War, because heavy water was seen as a route to an atomic bomb. A British glider raid in November 1942 ended in disaster, with the survivors executed. In February 1943 a team of Norwegian commandos working with the British SOE attacked the plant and destroyed the heavy-water section; a year later the resistance sank the ferry carrying the remaining stock across Lake Tinn.
Did you know? Water from the Møsvatn reservoir dropped about 300 metres through eleven giant pipes to the turbines of the original station.
02 Olidan Hydroelectric Power Station
Olidans kraftverk
Sweden · 1.8 km from Trollhättan58.274° N 12.272° E
Tubaist · CC BY-SA 3.0 What sets Olidan apart from most industrial plants is its architecture. The architect Erik Josephson clothed the machinery in red granite quarried at Vätö in Uppland, the same stone used for the Swedish Parliament building and the Royal Opera in Stockholm, and more than a thousand tonnes of it were brought in by boat. The result is a National Romantic stone monument with the air of a fortress: massive walls of dark red stone set above the gorge. At the peak of construction in 1909 some 1,520 workers were employed here, and the project turned Trollhättan from a sawmill village into a town.
Did you know? It holds 13 turbines of about 10 MW each: four started in 1910, four more in 1914 and the last five in 1921.
03 Heimbach Hydroelectric Power Station
Kraftwerk Heimbach
Germany50.629° N 6.452° E
Leonhard Lenz · CC0 The water arrives from the Urft reservoir behind the Kermeter ridge. The Urft dam, built between 1900 and 1904 as the biggest dam project in Europe at the time, holds back the lake; from it the Kermeter tunnel runs about 2.7 kilometres through the hill before the flow drops into two pressure pipes and down to the turbines, with a head of up to 110 metres at full reservoir. The plant stands in the Hasenfeld quarter of Heimbach, on the Rur, a short distance below the Schwammenauel dam, so the whole engineering story of the upper Rur — reservoirs, tunnel, powerhouse — can be read in one small corner of the hills.
Did you know? The station still produces about 25 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, drawing up to 18 cubic metres of water per second.
04 Såheim Power Station
Norway59.877° N 8.593° E
Jac Brun · Public domain The station was the second great step in harnessing the Måna river, which drops from the lake Møsvatn through the Vestfjord valley. Water that had already passed through Vemork upstream was carried to Såheim through a tunnel almost 5.7 km long, begun in January 1912; construction of the station itself started in 1914, and it was formally put into service in January 1916. Its electricity fed the Birkeland-Eyde process, in which an electric arc fixed nitrogen from the air to make nitrate fertiliser, and it powered Norsk Hydro's production in Rjukan until the late 1920s, when Norsk Hydro switched to the Haber-Bosch process. Nitric acid continued to be made on the site until 1991.
Did you know? Its eleven original generating sets together delivered about 167,000 horsepower.
05 Taccani Hydroelectric Power Station
Centrale idroelettrica Taccani
Italy · 15.1 km from Bergamo45.613° N 9.521° E
Antonella Cappo · CC BY-SA 4.0 The plant was the project of Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, head of the cotton-milling dynasty, who bought the promontory and the castle remains in 1894 to secure energy for his model company town downstream, Crespi d'Adda, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The concession was granted in 1903, the first stone was laid in July 1904, and the station was completed in 1906. The architecture was Moretti's, while the hydraulic and electrical engineering was the work of Adolfo Covi, Alessandro Taccani and Oreste Simonatti; it is Taccani's name the plant carries. Besides the Crespi mill, its current also helped light Milan.
Did you know? Engineer Adolfo Covi did away with the usual intake canal, so the turbine hall draws water directly from the basin in front of the building.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most remarkable hydroelectric power stations in Europe?
- On our list, Vemork (Norway) ranks first, followed by Olidan Hydroelectric Power Station (Sweden) and Heimbach Hydroelectric Power Station (Germany).
- Which country has the most hydroelectric power stations in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Norway (2), Germany (1) and Italy (1).
- What happened at Vemork during the Second World War?
- Vemork produced heavy water, which Germany wanted for its nuclear research. In February 1943 Norwegian commandos sabotaged the plant in Operation Gunnerside, one of the best known actions of the war.
- Why do early power stations look like castles or palaces?
- Electricity was new and prestigious, and power companies and towns wanted their stations to express progress and civic pride. Architects therefore used historic and Art Nouveau styles instead of plain industrial sheds.
- How many hydroelectric power stations are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 5 hydroelectric power stations in 4 countries. Norway has the most, with 2.