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Europe’s beauty ranges from Arctic fjords to Mediterranean beaches, from medieval walled towns to 20th-century garden estates, from Alpine valleys to limestone gorges cut by rivers over geological time. The breadth of the category is part of what makes it compelling and part of what makes a list like this necessarily incomplete. No 10 destinations can represent the full visual range of a continent that spans from Norway’s Lofoten archipelago to the volcanic crater lakes of the Azores, from Scotland’s single-track coastal roads to the still waters of Italian lakes framed by mountain ranges. A list can point toward destinations that deliver a concentrated, distinctive version of what European landscape beauty actually means.
The 10 places here reflect a range of landscape types: a lake, a garden, a mountain valley, a hilltop town, a river gorge, a riverfront village, an ancient lake on two national borders, a single-lane road, and a beach. Several are based on recommendations from travel experts consulted by Travel + Leisure: Jim Strong, president of Strong Travel Services, and Emma Major Schroeder, a luxury travel advisor at Major Traveler. Their firsthand assessments give specific texture to destinations that generalized descriptions of scenery cannot always convey.
