Plenty of the world’s best cities are primed for exploring on two feet, and plenty more have excellent public transport systems to facilitate covering more ground efficiently.
However, cycling is the best of both worlds – you can speedily zip from A to B while soaking up plenty of the city’s atmosphere and sights, and there are loads of hubs across the world designed with two-wheel transport in mind.
The best ones have just been crowned in our global ranking, which relied on insight from locals who told us about how easy it is to cycle in their city, but let’s take a closer look at which places fared best for Europe.
Topping the Europe and worldwide list was the English city of Cambridge, where 83.2 percent of locals described cycling around as either ‘good’ or ‘amazing’. Why? Well, flat geography and temperate weather conditions are largely to thank, and cycling does tie in pretty well with the whole academic vibe of the place. You can read more in our UK coverage.
Copenhagen came second for Europe (and third overall) with an approval score of 79.2 percent and Vienna followed in third (and fifth worldwide) with 77.7 percent.
Our most surprising finding? Well, thanks to our selection of one city per country for this ranking, Rotterdam beat out cycling heavyweight Amsterdam to represent the Netherlands. In total, 69.3 percent of locals we spoke to said it was easy to cycle around the Dutch second city, which landed in seventh place in Europe and 13th overall. Pedal on to read more.
The best European cities for cycling, ranked
- Cambridge
- Copenhagen
- Vienna
- Warsaw
- Stockholm
- Seville
- Rotterdam
- Helsinki
- Frankfurt
- Luxembourg
- Ljubljana
🚴♀️ Discover the complete list of the world’s best cities for cycling, according to locals.
Plus: The world’s quietest island for a peaceful break has been revealed by a new Index.
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