Historical region
Western Europe
From the Roman Republic to the Enlightenment, Western Europe forged institutions, art and science whose currents still run through global culture.
Overview
Western Europe is a peninsula of peninsulas whose story braids together Celtic tribes, Roman law, Christian monastic learning, feudal kingdoms, mercantile city-states, and the industrial revolutions that reordered the planet.
Historical timeline
- c. 800 BCE – 476 CEGreco-Roman classical world
- 476 – 1450Medieval Christendom and feudalism
- 1450 – 1789Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Exploration
- 1789 – 1945Revolutions, empires, and two world wars
- 1945 – presentEuropean integration and postwar order
Civilizations
The Mediterranean-wide state that gave the West its law, roads and Latin heritage.
Inventors of democracy, philosophy, drama and the Olympics.
Bronze Age Crete's palace civilization.
The heroic Bronze Age world of Homer's Iliad.
Norse raiders, traders and settlers of the North Atlantic.
Iron Age Europe from the Atlantic to the Balkans.
A millennium of Central European imperial politics.
The first global empire on which 'the sun never set'.
The largest empire in world history.
Countries in this region
Home of Rome, the Renaissance and the Baroque — the peninsula that gave Europe its classical inheritance.
Explore history →From Gaul and the Franks to Louis XIV, the Revolution and the Fifth Republic.
Explore history →From Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to the world's largest empire and the Industrial Revolution.
Explore history →Birthplace of democracy, philosophy and Western drama.
Explore history →From Germanic tribes and the Holy Roman Empire to Prussia, unification, two world wars and reunification.
Explore history →Roman Hispania, al-Andalus, the Reconquista and the empire that circumnavigated the globe.
Explore history →Pioneers of the Age of Discovery whose empire linked Brazil, Africa and Asia.
Explore history →The Dutch Golden Age republic that built a global maritime empire from a delta below sea level.
Explore history →An island of monks, scholars, famine, revolution and postmodern boom.
Explore history →Viking Age, 17th-century Baltic empire, and the modern welfare state.
Explore history →Viking homeland, medieval kingdom, and a modern petro-state.
Explore history →The Viking kingdom that ruled the medieval North.
Explore history →A confederation of Alpine cantons neutral since 1815.
Explore history →