Southern Europe in the context of Montenegro

The Mediterranean Sea (/ˌmɛdɪtəˈreɪniən/ MED-ih-tə-RAY-nee-ən) is an intercontinental sea situated between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Europe, and on the south by North Africa. To its west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar that separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa by only 14 km (9 mi); additionally, it is connected to the Black Sea through the Bosporus strait that intersects Turkey in the northeast and the Red Sea via the Suez Canal in the southeast.

The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about 2,500,000 km (970,000 sq mi), representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface; it includes fifteen marginal seas, including the Aegean, Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Marmara. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.

Spain is a country located in southwestern Europe occupying most (about 82 percent) of the Iberian Peninsula. It also includes a small exclave inside France called Llívia, as well as the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean 108 km (67 mi) off northwest Africa, and five places of sovereignty (plazas de soberanía) on and off the coast of North Africa: Ceuta, Melilla, Islas Chafarinas, Peñón de Alhucemas, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera.

The Spanish mainland is bordered to the south and east almost entirely by the Mediterranean Sea (except for the small British territory of Gibraltar); to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal. With a land area of 504,782 square kilometres (194,897 sq mi) in the Iberian Peninsula, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe (behind France), and the fourth largest country in the European continent (behind Russia, Ukraine, and France). It has an average altitude of 650 m.

Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern and Western Europe. It consists of a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land border, as well as nearly 800 islands, notably Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares land borders with France to the west; Switzerland and Austria to the north; Slovenia to the east; and the two enclaves of Vatican City and San Marino. It is the tenth-largest country in Europe by area, covering 301,340 km (116,350 sq mi), and the third-most populous member state of the European Union, with nearly 59 million inhabitants. Italy's capital and largest city is Rome; other major cities include Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice.

The history of Italy goes back to numerous Italic peoples – notably including the ancient Romans, who conquered the Mediterranean world during the Roman Republic and ruled it for centuries during the Roman Empire. With the spread of Christianity, Rome became the seat of the Catholic Church and the Papacy. Barbarian invasions and other factors led to the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire between late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By the 11th century, Italian city-states and maritime republics expanded, bringing renewed prosperity through commerce and laying the groundwork for modern capitalism. The Italian Renaissance flourished during the 15th and 16th centuries and spread to the rest of Europe. Italian explorers discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, contributing significantly to the Age of Discovery.

The history of the Mediterranean region and of the cultures and people of the Mediterranean Basin is important for understanding the origin and development of the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Canaanite, Phoenician, Hebrew, Carthaginian, Minoan, Greek, Persian, Illyrian, Thracian, Etruscan, Iberian, Roman, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Arab, Berber, Ottoman, Christian and Islamic cultures. The Mediterranean Sea was the central superhighway of transport, trade and cultural exchange between diverse peoples encompassing three continents: Western Asia, North Africa, and Southern Europe.

Various articles are available under the category: History of the Mediterranean

The Albanian Adriatic Sea Coast (Albanian pronunciation: [brɛˈɡdɛ:ti adriˈa:tik] — Albanian: Bregdeti Adriatik) stretches in the south-eastern Adriatic Sea beginning at the Gulf of Drin in the north, across the port cities of Shëngjin, Durrës, and Vlorë, to the Bay of Vlorë in the south, where the Albanian Riviera and the Albanian Ionian Sea Coast begin.

Albania is geographically located in Southern and South-eastern Europe within the Balkan Peninsula. It borders on Montenegro to the north-west, Kosovo to the north-east, North Macedonia to the east, Greece to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The total length of the coastline is approximately 274 kilometres (170 mi), 178 kilometres (111 mi) of which are taken up by white sandy beaches and the rest by various other landforms.

The Albanian Ionian Sea Coast (Albanian pronunciation: [brɛˈɡdɛ:ti jˈɔn] — Albanian: Bregdeti Jon) is a coastline of the north-eastern Ionian Sea, that encompasses the south-western border of the Republic of Albania, stretching from the southern half of Karaburun Peninsula, across the historical region of Labëria, the city of Sarandë, the mountains of the Ceraunians, and the Albanian Riviera, to the Lake of Butrint, where the Strait of Corfu separates the country from Greece.

Albania is located in Southern and South-eastern Europe in the western section of the Balkan Peninsula. It borders on Montenegro to the north-west, Kosovo to the north-east, North Macedonia to the east, Greece to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The coastline occupies a total length of 446 kilometres (277 mi) and explicitly marked by a mountainous landscape supplied with deep bays, numerous islands, high cliffs, rocky and sandy coasts and unique marine life.

Europe is generally characterized by a temperate climate. Most of Western Europe has an oceanic climate, in the Köppen climate classification, featuring cool to warm summers and cool winters with frequent overcast skies. Southern Europe has a distinctively Mediterranean climate, which features warm to hot, dry summers and cool to mild winters and frequent sunny skies. Central-eastern Europe is classified as having a humid continental climate, which features warm to hot summers and cold winters.

San Marino, officially the Republic of San Marino (RSM), is a landlocked country in Southern Europe, completely surrounded by Italy. Located on the northeastern slopes of the Apennine Mountains, it is the larger of two microstates within Italy, the other being Vatican City. San Marino is the fifth-smallest country in the world, with a land area of just over 61 km (23.5 mi) and a population of 34,042 as of 2025. Its capital, the City of San Marino, sits atop Monte Titano, while its largest settlement is Dogana, in the municipality of Serravalle.

San Marino claims to have been founded in AD 301 and to be the oldest extant sovereign state and the oldest constitutional republic. It is named after Saint Marinus, a stonemason from the Roman island of Rab (in present-day Croatia), who is supposed in mythic accounts to have established a monastic community on Monte Titano. The country has a rare constitutional structure: the Grand and General Council, a democratically elected legislature, selects two heads of state, the Captains Regent, every six months. They are chosen from opposing political parties, and serve concurrently with equal powers and preside over several institutions of state, including the Grand and General Council. Only the Federal Council of Switzerland also follows that structure, except with seven heads of state, and different responsibilities and functions.

Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located at the intersection of Central, Western, and Southern Europe. It is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Austria and Liechtenstein to the east, and Italy to the south. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Alps, the Swiss Plateau, and the Jura mountains; the Alps cover most of the country's territory, whereas the majority of its 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts many of the largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern, Lausanne, Winterthur, and Lucerne.

Switzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with Bern serving as the federal city and the seat of the national government. The country encompasses four principal linguistic and cultural regions—German, French, Italian, and Romansh—reflecting a long-standing tradition of multilingualism and cultural pluralism. Swiss national identity nonetheless remains fairly cohesive, rooted in a shared historical background, common values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss nationhood transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a Willensnation ("nation of volition") rather than a conventional nation state.

The early Muslim conquests or early Islamic conquests (Arabic: الْفُتُوحَاتُ الإسْلَامِيَّة, romanized: al-Futūḥāt al-ʾIslāmiyya), also known as the Arab conquests, were a series of wars initiated in the 7th century by Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. He established the first Islamic state in Medina, Arabia that expanded rapidly under the Rashidun Caliphate and the Umayyad Caliphate, culminating in Muslim rule being established in Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern Europe over the following century. According to historian James Buchan: "In speed and extent, the first Arab conquests were matched only by those of Alexander the Great, and they were more lasting." At their height, the territory that was conquered by the Arab Muslims stretched from Iberia (at the Pyrenees) in the west to India (at Sind) in the east; Muslim control spanned Sicily, most of the Middle East and North Africa, and the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Among other drastic changes, the early Muslim conquests brought about the collapse of the Sasanian Empire and great territorial losses for the Byzantine Empire. Explanations for the Muslim victories have been difficult to discover, primarily because only fragmentary sources have survived from the period. American scholar Fred McGraw Donner suggests that Muhammad's establishment of an Islamic state in Arabia coupled with ideological (i.e., religious) coherence and mobilization constituted the main factor that propelled the early Muslim armies to successfully establish, in the timespan of roughly a century, one of the largest empires in history. Estimates of the total area of the combined territory held by the early Muslim polities at the conquests' peak have been as high as 13,000,000 square kilometres (5,000,000 sq mi). Most historians also agree that, as another primary factor determining the early Muslim conquests' success, the Sasanians and the Byzantines were militarily and economically exhausted from decades of warfare against each other.

The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, and from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum.

Turkic languages are spoken by some 200 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans; its native speakers account for about 38% of all Turkic speakers, followed by Uzbek.

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Europe and the fourth-most populous European Union (EU) member state. Spanning the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, its territory also includes the Canary Islands, in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean; the Balearic Islands, in the Western Mediterranean Sea; and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in mainland Africa. Peninsular Spain is bordered to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; to the east and south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, and Palma de Mallorca.

In early antiquity, the Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Celts, Iberians, and other pre-Roman peoples. The Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula created the province of Hispania, which became deeply Romanised and later Christianised. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the peninsula was conquered by tribes from Central Europe, among them the Visigoths, who established the Visigothic Kingdom centred on Toledo. In the early 8th century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, with Al-Andalus centred on Córdoba. The northern Christian kingdoms of Iberia launched the so-called Reconquista, gradually repelling and ultimately expelling Islamic rule from the peninsula, culminating with the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1479 under the Catholic Monarchs is often seen as the de facto unification of Spain as a nation state.

Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago 80 km (50 mi) south of Italy, 284 km (176 mi) east of Tunisia, and 333 km (207 mi) north of Libya. The two official languages are Maltese and English. The country's capital is Valletta, which is the smallest capital city in the European Union (EU) by both area and population.

With a population of about 542,000 spread over an area of 316 km (122 sq mi), Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country by area and the ninth-most densely populated. Various sources consider the country to consist of a single urban region, for which reason it is often described as a city-state.

Southern France, also known as the south of France or colloquially in French as le Midi, is a geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. It includes southern Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west, Occitania in the centre, the southern parts of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the northeast, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the southeast, as well as the island of Corsica in the southeast. Southern France is generally considered part of southern Europe because of its association with the Mediterranean Sea.

The colloquial French name for the region, le Midi, is derived from an Old French compound composed of mi ("middle") and di ("day"), meaning literally "midday". Thus, the term is comparable in both origin and meaning to Mezzogiorno, which to indicates southern Italy, and Romanian Miazăzi which is a synonym for south.

The Italian geographic region, Italian physical region or Italian region is a geographical region of Southern Europe delimited to the north by the mountain chains of the Alps. This subregion is composed of a peninsular and continental part and an insular part. Located between the Balkan Peninsula and the Iberian Peninsula, it protrudes into the centre of the Mediterranean Sea and overlooks the Adriatic Sea, the Ionian Sea, the Ligurian Sea, the Sardinian Channel, the Sea of Corsica, the Sea of Sardinia, the Strait of Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The Italian geographic region, in its traditional and most widely accepted extent, has an area of approximately 324,000 square kilometres (125,000 sq mi), which is greater than the area of the entire Italian Republic (301,230 square kilometres (116,310 sq mi)). The region also includes territories that are sovereign parts of Croatia, France, Slovenia, and Switzerland, as well as the four small sovereign states of the Principality of Monaco, the Republic of Malta, the Republic of San Marino, and the Vatican City State (the Holy See).

The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain (Italian: Pianura Padana, pronounced [pjaˈnuːra paˈdaːna], or Val Padana) is a major geographical feature of northern Italy. It extends approximately 650 km (400 mi) in an east-west direction, with an area of 46,000 km (18,000 square miles) including its Venetic extension not actually related to the Po basin; it runs from the Western Alps to the Adriatic Sea. The flatlands of Veneto and Friuli are often considered apart since they do not drain into the Po, but they effectively combine into an unbroken plain, making it the largest in Southern Europe. It has a population of 17 million, or a third of Italy's total population.

The plain is the surface of an in-filled system of ancient canyons (the "Apennine Foredeep") extending from the Apennines in the south to the Alps in the north, including the northern Adriatic. In addition to the Po and its affluents, the contemporary surface may be considered to include the Savio, Lamone and Reno to the south, and the Adige, Brenta, Piave and Tagliamento of the Venetian Plain to the north, among the many streams that empty into the north Adriatic from the west and north.

The Arabian plate is a minor tectonic plate in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres.

It is one of the three continental plates (along with the African and Indian plates) that have been moving northward in geological history and colliding with the Eurasian plate. This collision is resulting in a mingling of plate pieces and mountain ranges extending in the west from the Pyrenees, crossing Southern Europe to Iranian plateau, forming the Alborz and the Zagros Mountains, to the Himalayas and ranges of Southeast Asia.