Europe's Largest Cities Throughout History: Every Year

An animated map of Europe's largest cities over time, from 1600 BCE to modern times.

0:00 Intro
0:44 Ancient era
1:12 Greco-Roman World
1:59 Middle Ages
3:54 Early Modern
5:01 Modern
6:46 Outro

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Notes

• You can view the data and source for this video here:

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Music

• Marten Moses - The Searchers
• Marten Moses - Public Tragedy
• Marten Moses - Hitchhike Homicide

[OllieBye]

For those who missed the community post, the HRE video is still in production, and I will be continuing with it over the coming months.

A quick Q&A for this video:

Q: "Didn't Rome have 1 million people?"
A: Not within the area eventually bound by the Aurelian Walls, no, as this requires an implausible population density. It may have had suburbs beyond the walls, which take its population close to 1 million according to some sources. You can read more about this in the notes page of this projects spreadsheet, linked in the description.

Q: "Why are some estimates in this video different to the 2021 video about world cities?"
A: I used a different dataset for part of this video, which is more up to date and detailed, but only covers Europe. In most cases the variances are small, but in some cases (such as medieval Paris and Granada) they are more significant.

Q: "Why do the modern estimates in this video vary from what Google says?"
If you search for a modern city's population out-of-context on a search engine, you'll probably be given the population within the official city limits. This video's data is entirely based on urban area, which in some cases goes significantly beyond the city limits.

[clouds-rbxt]

I find it funny how Constantinople dissapears in the 1800s and then makes a sudden resurgence mid-late 20th century quickly becoming the largest city again

[chichkrogh]

Rome was the first city in Europe to reach 1m residents and it didn’t happen again until the 19th century. People don’t realize how advanced Rome was

[KSS-wklp]

most impressive thing is that the first city to ever reach 1.000.000 people was Rome, and it was only surpassed by London more than 1000 years later...

[knightarnaud]

Crazy how Ghent was once the third biggest city of Europe ...

[danialamin]

Facinating to see how the core of european population shifts from south to north over the centuries

[BlackMamBa-yqon]

Naples is so underrated
It was representing Italy for most of recent history

[iseeyou]

I have no beef with Turkish but the spam Nationalist comment are obnoxious

[diranbodossian]

The moment where the Black Death hit and everything shrunk gave me chills

[carlosdumbratzen]

Funny how Germany, the most populated country in Europe after Turkey and Russia (both only partially in Europe) features very little in this video.

[ArdaSReal]

The boom after the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople and in the 20th century is so cool to see, history is so much refelcted in demigraphics

[Faolan]

The modern flags in this vid are a pain in the ass for every history

[Napoleon_]

I really appreciate the effort you put in these videos, and I love the city series.

[rinrival]

бро перепутал великий новгород и нижний новгород

[endless]

Thank you for your nice video:)
One thing to note though. You sometimes use metropolitan areas and sometimes the city proper. E.g., for Berlin or Paris, as Berlin had a population of around 2.08 million in 1910, and not 2.9 million. Similarly, Paris nowadays has a population of 2.2 million, but the metro area is huge (and densly connected)

[vittorioamato]

Just an info about my city (Siracusa in Sicily). It was capital of eastern roman empire from 663 to 669, and it was the second biggest city of the empire till the infamous 878 year.

[spankymcflych]

It's amazing how (relatively) quickly the population levels fluctuate. I wonder if the people just all die when a city halves over a hundred years or if they're migrating somewhere else.

[licxips]

Very good and very understandable! Tysm!

[CommonSwindler]

The population of Palermo during the Norman era is far, far too low. Donald Matthew in his overview of of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily estimates it’s size at more than 100, 000. This easily stands to reason since it was the hub of the Mediterranean.

[vinifrss]

Hi from Rio, Brazil. If 350 CE - 1000 CE was displayed slowly too, the importance of Constantinople (Istanbul) would be EVEN greater!! Just WOW... Istanbul is the Eternal City in history, the only phoenix of world History, it never dies, and it's back again.. I don't get why this fact isn't recognized? Why people desperately try to hype Paris, Rome, London?