Budget travel in Europe
Most of what is worth seeing in a European city is free, and the part that is not usually has a free version nearby. This is a running list of both: 2646 places across 46 countries, each one saying plainly whether it costs anything.
By country
504 cities and towns so far. Each country page links down to every one of them.
Costs nothing
Places that charge no entry at all. Turn up, look, leave.
Early 20th-century palace ringed by gardens in the south of Vitoria-Gasteiz, serving as the official residence of the Lehendakari, the president of the Basque Country. The interior is closed to the public, but the building and its grounds are free to view from outside, which is the whole appeal for a budget traveler passing through.
The Alameda de Cervantes is Soria's main public park and the green heart of one of Spain's quietest provincial capitals. Locals still call it La Dehesa. It is free, open, and counts among the oldest urban public gardens in the country, with shaded avenues of ancient trees, a small chapel, ornamental fountains, and a music bandstand.
The 12th-century Almohad defensive wall that rings the old town of Caceres, the structure that encloses the entire UNESCO-listed medieval quarter. Surviving stretches of the rammed-earth and stone ramparts reveal the Moorish layer beneath the later medieval cityscape, and they are free to walk and view from the surrounding streets.
Remnants of a mosque from the Moorish period, traceable along the line of the Muslim Walls of Elvas. A quiet, lesser-known marker of the town's Islamic past, free to view from the street. Worth a short pause for budget travelers already walking the old walls, rather than a destination in its own right.
A small medieval synagogue tucked into the former Jewish Quarter of Elvas, evidence of the town's Sephardic heritage before the Inquisition. One of the few surviving synagogue traces in southern Portugal.
Continental Europe's oldest metro line, built in 1896, runs directly under Andrassy Avenue from the city center to Heroes' Square. Above it, the boulevard was laid out simultaneously as Budapest's answer to the Champs-Elysees: Neo-Renaissance palaces and mansions, the Hungarian State Opera House, luxury shops, and 2.5 kilometers of plane trees.
On foot
A tip-based tour costs what you decide it costs, and it is the fastest way to work out which half of a city you actually want.
The Acropolis Hill Circuit is a self-guided walk connecting the three hills around the Acropolis through pine forests and rocky paths. Free. It passes the site of the world's first democratic assembly and the most historically significant free walk in Europe.
The Ancient Rome Mile is a self-guided walking route from the Colosseum through the historic center to the Baroque heart of the city. Free to walk. It covers 2,500 years of history on foot in one long morning.
The Berlin Wall Trail is a self-guided walking route following the path of the former Wall through the city. Free. A 10-kilometer route from the Berlin Wall Memorial through Mitte to Checkpoint Charlie and the East Side Gallery covering Cold War history through the places where it actually happened.
How this works
A vague price is worse than no price, because it looks like research that was not done. So an entry here carries a cost only where the cost is known, and stays quiet where it is not. Nothing is padded out to fill a template.
