Larger urban zone in the context of "Urban unit"

This is a list of urban areas in the European Union with over 500,000 inhabitants as of 2022. The data comes from Demographia and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Demographia provides figures for urban areas (including conurbations), while the UN DESA figures are a mix agglomerations, cities proper and metropolitan areas. For comparison, Function Urban Area (FUA) population figures by Eurostat are also provided, however, these measure the wider metropolitan areas.

The Thessaloniki metropolitan area or larger urban zone (LUZ) is the complete area covered and directly influenced by Thessaloniki. The metropolitan area traditionally consisted of the municipality of Thessaloniki and its immediate surroundings, which is today referred to as the Thessaloniki urban area. However, since the mid to late 1990s, the areas surrounding the urban area have succumbed to urban sprawl and what used to be agrarian communities are rapidly urbanizing and being developed into suburbs or exurbs. This is creating new problems for a region already facing issues such as pollution, traffic congestion and social ills.

Thessalonians usually refer to 6 municipalities and 1 municipal unit as the "City of Thessaloniki" (or the Thessaloniki urban area); this is the contiguous densely built-up urban area of the city. However, the metropolitan area also includes the city's immediate surroundings, adjacent zone of influence and its low to medium density suburbs that surround the densely built-up urban area.

This is a list of the largest cities in the European Union according to the population within their city boundary. The cities listed all have populations over 300,000. The list deals exclusively with the areas within city administrative boundaries as opposed to urban areas or larger urban zones (metropolitan areas), which are generally larger in terms of population than the main city (although they can also be smaller).

As some cities have a very narrow boundary and others a very wide one, the list may not give an accurate view of the comparative magnitude of entire urban areas, and thus the figures in the list should be treated with caution. Common examples of confusion are Paris, where the Paris metropolitan area has different boundaries than the city proper, the City of Brussels that is confused with the Brussels-Capital Region, and Portuguese municipalities, where the population of the municipality's core may be significantly lower than the total population within its boundaries.

The Metropolitan City of Messina (Italian: città metropolitana di Messina) is a metropolitan city in Sicily, Italy. Its capital is the city of Messina. It replaced the province of Messina and comprises Messina and 107 other comuni (sg.: comune).

It has 595,948 inhabitants as of 2025. According to Eurostat in 2014, the FUA of the metropolitan area of Messina had 277,584 inhabitants. The nearby archipelago of Aeolian Islands is also administratively a part of the Metropolitan City of Messina.

Malta is an island in Southern Europe. It is the largest and most populous of the three major islands that constitute the Maltese Archipelago and the country of Malta. The island is situated in the Mediterranean Sea directly south of Italy and north of Libya. It lies south-east of the smaller islands of Gozo and Comino. The island is 27 kilometres (17 mi) long and 14.5 kilometres (9 mi) wide, with a total area of 246 square kilometres (95 sq mi). The capital is Valletta, while the largest locality is Rabat. The island is made up of many small towns, which together form one larger urban zone with a population of 409,259. The landscape is characterised by low hills with terraced fields.