Original research

The European city walking tour data report

We build narrated, self-guided audio walking tours of European cities. This page counts what is inside that catalog: how many sights each city holds, what kinds they are, how tightly they cluster on the ground, and how the coverage splits across countries. Every number is computed from the live catalog when the site is built.

Data as of 4 September 2026. We recompute this page on each build, so the figures move as the catalog grows.

The short version

Across 106 European cities, we map 2,164 sights in 17 countries, about 108 hours of narration and more than 417,000 words of researched text, all in 6 languages. A typical city holds 20 sights, and half of them sit within about 1.2 km of the city centre, roughly a 15-minute walk.

106cities
2,164narrated sights
17countries
~108hof narration
417,000+words of research (EN)
6languages, every sight
Finding 1

How many sights a city holds

The average city carries 20.4 sights and the median is 20. The smallest guide has 5 stops and the largest has 47. A typical city adds up to about 24 hours on your feet if you stop at every sight.

The 12 deepest guides

CitySights~Narration
Rome, Italy 47 ~2h
Madrid, Spain 45 ~2h
Paris, France 44 ~2h
Berlin, Germany 43 ~2h
Venice, Italy 42 ~2h
Florence, Italy 42 ~2h
Dublin, Ireland 42 ~2h
Amsterdam, Netherlands 42 ~2h
Barcelona, Spain 41 ~2h
London, England 41 ~2h
Prague, Czechia 35 ~2h
Vienna, Austria 35 ~2h

Browse every city on the cities index.

Finding 2

What you actually see

Every sight carries one of 18 categories. Old streets and quarters, museums, and landmarks lead, but more than a third of the catalog is churches, nature, markets, squares, palaces, and the long tail below.

historic 354 (16.4%)
museum 333 (15.4%)
landmark 311 (14.4%)
religious 239 (11.0%)
nature 127 (5.9%)
market 117 (5.4%)
square 116 (5.4%)
palace 87 (4.0%)
monument 71 (3.3%)
castle 57 (2.6%)
village 56 (2.6%)
park 53 (2.4%)
ruins 51 (2.4%)
garden 50 (2.3%)
theater 46 (2.1%)
bridge 39 (1.8%)
distillery 38 (1.8%)
university 19 (0.9%)
Finding 3

How walkable the historic centres are

To measure how tightly a city's sights sit together, we take the geographic centre of each city's sights and measure how far each sight is from it. In the median city, half the sights fall within about 1.2 km of that centre, roughly a 15-minute walk. This is why a self-guided audio tour works on foot: the sights are close.

The most compact cores

Cities with at least 15 sights, ranked by how close their sights sit to the centre (lower is tighter).

CitySightsHalf within
Pompeii, Italy 15 ~133 m
Siena, Italy 20 ~154 m
Sorrento, Italy 15 ~168 m
Matera, Italy 15 ~311 m
Taormina, Italy 15 ~339 m
Bologna, Italy 22 ~350 m
York, England 18 ~363 m
Salzburg, Austria 15 ~374 m
Finding 4

Coverage by country

The catalog spans 17 countries. Italy leads by a wide margin, then Spain and France, with a long list of single-city and two-city countries behind them.

CountryCitiesSightsSights / city
Italy 36 693 19.3
Spain 15 337 22.5
France 10 204 20.4
Germany 6 139 23.2
England 8 116 14.5
Switzerland 5 103 20.6
Portugal 5 95 19.0
Belgium 4 88 22.0
Scotland 4 70 17.5
Ireland 2 64 32.0
Netherlands 2 64 32.0
Austria 3 61 20.3
Czechia 2 47 23.5
Hungary 1 31 31.0
Northern Ireland 1 22 22.0
Luxembourg 1 15 15.0
Monaco 1 15 15.0
Finding 5

Six languages, every sight

Every one of the 2,164 sights carries a name and a description in all 6 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Turkish, and Chinese. The narration is spoken by a lifelike AI voice, so a sight sounds the same whichever language you choose.

Methodology

How we counted

  • Source. The published Gingerguide app catalog, the same data the app ships. We count only active cities with at least one published sight.
  • A "sight" is one published point of interest with a name, a description, and coordinates.
  • Narration hours are an estimate at about three minutes of narration per sight, the same basis used across the site. They are not a sum of exact audio file lengths.
  • Word counts are English text only (short and long descriptions plus city overviews). The same content exists in all six languages, so the true total is several times larger.
  • Compactness is the median straight-line distance from a city's sights to the average position of those sights. It measures clustering, not street-level walking distance, and it is order-independent.
  • Time on your feet sums each sight's suggested visit time. It excludes walking between sights.
  • Data date. 4 September 2026. The page is recomputed from the live catalog on every site build, so a growing catalog updates every figure here.

Walk any of these cities yourself

Download Gingerguide and try a free preview in every city. The sights above become a narrated walk in your pocket.

Keep reading: Best European cities for a walking tour, What is a self-guided audio tour?, and How to choose a city audio guide.