Which European city appears the most often in literature?

Literature
Emily Temple

August 22, 2023, 10:51am

If you guessed London, you’re right—London is mentioned at least three times more often than any other European city. (Wonder why?)

As Travel Daily reports, a digital printing company called Aura Print has apparently processed the entire Google Books database to “identify the cumulative mentions of 31 prominent European cities across books spanning from 1920 to 2019,” as well as the decades in which they were the most popular. Here are the results:

Rank European City Most popular decade Total occurrences in books (1920-2019)
1 London 1960s 286,675,501
2 Paris 1920s 95,290,475
3 Rome 1920s 48,840,949
4 Berlin 1940s 37,079,709
5 Moscow 1980s 31,405,361
6 Florence 1920s 19,414,470
7 Vienna 1980s 18,995,437
8 Athens 1960s 15,118,606
9 Dublin 1920s 15,021,998
10 Amsterdam 1990s 12,868,807
11 Brussels 1990s 10,949,717
12 Venice 1920s 10,237,695
13 Madrid 1990s 9,883,636
14 Stockholm 1980s 8,813,100
15 Warsaw 1980s 8,054,316
16 Munich 1990s 8,025,343
17 Milan 1960s 7,917,978
18 Copenhagen 1950s 7,317,785
19 Prague 1960s 6,702,244
20 Porto 1920s 6,604,087

If you’re looking for some London-centric books to read (and don’t want to just throw a dart at your bookshelf), here are a few suggestions. Prefer Paris? Try a book from this outsider reading list. Or perhaps you’d like to explore literary Dublin. Have fun out there.

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