Europe is home to many large, dynamic cities with populations of over a million people.
However, few are what can be considered megacities like new Yorkwhich has about 22 million inhabitants.
This is partly because some European countries are relatively small and others have several main cities rather than one large capital.
However, of the 20 largest cities in Europe by population, five of them are actually in the same country: Russia.
The largest city on the continent is Moscowwhich has a population of more than ten million people.
However, the Russian capital is an exception, with statistics showing that populations between one and three million are more common in many large European cities.
Also on the list are the most popular tourist spots in Western Europe, such as London, Madrid, Rome, Paris and Berlin.
Below, Expresso lists the twenty largest European cities and five of them are located in Russia.
1. Moscow, Russia (10.381.2220)
2. London, United Kingdom (7,556,900)
3. St. 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. Kharkov, Ukraine (1,430,885).
18. Novosibirsk, Russia (1,419,007)
19. Yekaterinburg, Russia (1,349,772)
20. Nizhny Novgorod, Russia (1,284,164)
Many have never heard of most of the Russian cities on the list, apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, but most of them have great historical importance.
Yekaterinburg is located in the Urals and was the birthplace of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Today, the city is home to the Yeltsin Presidential Center, which includes a museum, an exhibition and discussion center, and a branch of Boris Yeltsin’s presidential library.
But perhaps the city is most famous for being the place where the Romanov family of Nicholas II were assassinated by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution.
In the early hours of July 17, 1918, the Romanovs, former tsars Nicholas IIthe former Tsarina Alexandra, her five children, and her four remaining servants, including the family’s loyal doctor, Eugene Botkin—were awakened by their Bolshevik captors and told to dress and gather their belongings for a quick nighttime departure.
At the time, they were staying at the Ipatiev House, the home of a Russian merchant’s family.
Nicholas and his family gathered in the basement of the mansion, together, almost as if they were posing for a family portrait.
Alexandra, who was ill, asked for a chair, and Nicholas asked for one for his only son, Alexei, aged 13. Two were brought down.
They waited there until suddenly 11 or 12 heavily armed men entered the room menacingly.
The men then killed the family in cold blood, in what became one of the most notorious political events of the 20th century.