Overrated Tourist Spots in Europe (And Where to Go Instead)

The honest truth about Europe's most famous destinations

Skip the hours-long queues and €18 cocktails. Europe's iconic spots can be extraordinary. They're also the continent's most crowded, most expensive, and most likely to leave you feeling like you experienced the place through a crowd of selfie sticks rather than with your own eyes.

The best European trips in 2025 skip the obvious. For every landmark drowning in queues, there's a lesser-known version that delivers the same payoff without the misery.

Santorini → Milos, Greece

Santorini is one of the most photographed places on Earth, which is precisely the problem. In summer, cruise ships unload thousands of tourists daily into Oia, turning that famous blue-domed sunset into a contact sport. Cave-house accommodation starts at €400 a night, restaurants price-gouge without apology, and the caldera views you've seen a thousand times online are nearly impossible to capture without someone's arm in the shot.

Go to Milos instead

Milos sits just 87 nautical miles from Santorini but feels like a completely different era. The island has everything Santorini advertises: the same volcanic geology, dramatic sea cliffs, hot springs, otherworldly rock formations, 70 beaches (more than anywhere else in the Cyclades), and virtually no cruise ship traffic. There's also a fishing village called Klima where candy-colored boathouses sit directly at the waterline. Accommodation runs 40–60% cheaper than Santorini, and you can walk into a waterfront taverna without a reservation three days in advance.

Go in late May or early September: prices drop 30% and the Aegean is still swimsuit-warm.

Dubrovnik → Kotor, Montenegro

Dubrovnik hit its breaking point years ago and hasn't recovered. The city walls, a genuine UNESCO masterpiece, now charge €35 to walk and manage visitor numbers by the hour. The Old Town is so saturated with Game of Thrones tourism that the city installed signs asking visitors not to sit on doorsteps in their swimwear. A basic hotel room inside the walls costs more than a boutique stay in Lisbon.

Go to Kotor instead

Montenegro's Kotor is everything Dubrovnik used to be: a walled medieval city on a fjord-like bay, with a fraction of the foot traffic. The fortifications climb straight up the mountain behind town, 1,350 steps to the fortress, about 45 minutes, with views that make Dubrovnik's walls look modest. Boka Bay is one of the most cinematic stretches of the Adriatic. Budget travelers find €50 guesthouses inside the walls; couples can book a converted palazzo for what a standard Dubrovnik hotel costs.

Šibenik, Croatia is also worth the detour: smaller than Split or Dubrovnik, with a cathedral that predates Dubrovnik's by two centuries and almost no stag parties.

Amsterdam → Ghent, Belgium

Amsterdam is extraordinary. It's also home to some of the most overtouristed streets in Northern Europe, where cannabis tourism has turned Leidseplein into an obstacle course. Canal-house hotels cost as much as central London, the Rijksmuseum requires booking weeks out, and the city has explicitly asked budget overnight visitors to reconsider their plans.

Go to Ghent instead

Ghent is a medieval Flemish city with canals, guildhouses, a working castle in the middle of town, and a local population that still actually lives there. The art is serious: the Van Eyck altarpiece at Saint Bavo's Cathedral is a genuine rival to Amsterdam's finest. The food and beer culture is outstanding, hotel rates run 35–50% lower, and the city is 32 minutes from Brussels Airport by train. It's one of the most underappreciated cities in Western Europe.

Utrecht is worth considering too, with its unique double-level canals and a student energy that keeps it lively year-round.

Cinque Terre → Puglia, Italy

The five pastel villages of Cinque Terre are everything the brochure promises, and completely overwhelmed by July. Trains between villages get suspended on peak days. Hiking trails require advance-purchase permits. A waterfront table in Vernazza is priced for the photo opportunity, not the food. The magic is real, but the experience has been engineered out of existence.

Go to Puglia instead

Southern Italy's heel is having a long-overdue moment and still hasn't tipped into mass tourism. The trulli of Alberobello are genuinely strange and photogenic. Matera, a short drive over the Basilicata border, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, carved into a ravine, and was a European Capital of Culture in 2019. The Salento coast has water as blue as Greece with far fewer crowds, and the food will permanently recalibrate your understanding of what pasta can be.

June or late September is the sweet spot: the Adriatic is at its best and the summer rush has passed.

Mykonos → Naxos, Greece

Mykonos built its entire identity around being fabulous and expensive. If that's the brief, it delivers. But for everyone else, Naxos, the largest Cycladic island, offers marble mountain villages, serious hiking, excellent local wine and cheese, and beaches long enough that you'll never compete for a sunbed. It's also one of the only Greek islands with enough farmland to feed itself, which means the food is measurably better.

A note on timing

Even Europe's most overrated spots have their moments. Dubrovnik in February is hauntingly beautiful and nearly empty. Paris in late January is affordable and genuinely romantic. If your travel dates flex, shoulder season (mid-April through mid-June, or September through October) cuts crowd levels by 40–60% and unlocks the version of these cities that locals actually love.

Skip the famous version often enough and you start to realize: the thing you actually wanted wasn't the landmark. It was the feeling of being somewhere that hasn't rehearsed your visit. These places still have that.