List of European cities by population within city limits

The largest cities in Europe have populations over one million inhabitants within their city boundary. In this article, cities are sorted by official population. Capital cities are in bold. The rankings are based on populations contained within city administrative boundaries, as opposed to urban areas or metropolitan areas, which necessarily have larger populations than the cities embedded within them.

As some cities have narrow boundaries and others wide ones, the list may not give an accurate view of the comparative magnitude of different places, and the figures in the list should be treated with caution: for example, Paris is the second most populous urban area in Europe, but the strict definition of the administrative limits of the City of Paris results in a far lower^{[and plain silly]} population shown in the table.