The 20 biggest cities in Europe by population – five are in one country

Europe is home to many large dynamic cities boasting populations of more than one million people.

However few are what might be deemed as megacities like New York, which has around 22 million inhabitants.

This is partly due to some European countries being relatively small and others having multiple major cities rather than one large capital city.

However, of the top 20 cities in Europe by population, five of them are in fact in the same country: Russia.

The largest city on the continent is Moscow, which has a population of more than ten million people.

However, the Russian capital is very much an outlier, with statistics showing that populations of between one and three million are more typical for many major European cities.

Also on the list are popular western European tourist hotspots like London, Madrid, Rome, Paris and Berlin.

Below the Express lists the twenty largest European cities and five of them are located in Russia.

1. Moscow, Russia (10,381,2220)

2. London, UK (7,556,900)

3. Saint Petersburg, Russia (5,028,000);

4. Berlin, Germany (3,426,354)

5. Madrid, Spain (3,255,944)

6. Kyiv, Ukraine (2,797,553).

7. Rome, Italy (2,318,895)

8. Paris, France (2,138,551)

9. Bucharest, Romania (1,877,155)

10. Minsk, Belarus (1,742,124)

11. Budapest, Hungary (1,741,041);

12. Hamburg, Germany (1,739,117).

13. Warsaw, Poland (1,702,139)

14. Vienna, Austria (1,691,468)

15. Barcelona, Spain (1,621,537)

16. Stockholm, Sweden (1,515,017)

17. Kharkiv, Ukraine (1,430,885).

18. Novosibirsk, Russia (1,419,007)

19. Yekaterinburg, Russia (1,349,772)

20. Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia (1,284,164)

Many will have never have heard of most of the Russian cities on the list, other than Moscow and St Petersburg, but most of them are of huge historic significance.

Yekaterinburg is located in the Urals and was the birth place of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Today the city is home to the Yeltsin Presidential Centre, which includes a museum, exhibition and discussion centre, as well as a branch of the Boris Yeltsin’s Presidential library.

But perhaps the city is most famous for being the place where the Romanov family of Nicholas II were murdered by the Bolsheviks, following the Russian revolution.

In the early hours of July 17, 1918, the Romanovs—ex-tsar Nicholas II, ex-tsarina Alexandra, their five children, and their four remaining servants, including the loyal family doctor, Eugene Botkin—were awoken by their Bolshevik captors and told they must dress and gather their belongings for a swift nocturnal departure.

At the time they were staying at the Ipatiev House, the family home of a Russian merchant.

Nicholas and his family gathered in the cellar of the mansion, standing together almost as if they were posing for a family portrait.

Alexandra, who was sick, asked for a chair, and Nicholas asked for another one for his only son, 13-year-old Alexei. Two were brought down.

They waited there until, suddenly, 11 or 12 heavily armed men filed ominously into the room.

The men then gunned down the family in cold blood in what became one of the most notorious political event of the C20th.