There’s something slightly humiliating about being a tourist. No matter how respectful and cool you try to be, you’re going to end up spending time going places where locals wouldn’t be caught dead, and that’s okay.
Some tourist attractions are worth fighting through the throngs of slow-walkers and camera-wielders, but others are, for lack of a better term, complete flops. But as a tourist, how can you know which is which before you visit? Enter the Telegraph.
The Telegraph travel team has put together a list of the ‘most naff attractions’ in Europe, so that you can make sure you avoid them at all costs. To qualify, a destination can’t be awful; instead, it should be very boring, overrated, and offer no insights into the local culture. In other words, if beige was a place, it would be here.
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So what attraction should you cross off your 2026 to-do list? First, the Juliet balcony in Verona.
It is true – this landmark has nothing to do with Shakespeare or his star-cross’d lovers. In fact, it was built more than 300 years after he died. It’s just a balcony like any other, except now you have to pay €12 to access it. If you’re a huge Romeo & Juliet fan, you might think that price is worth it for the photo op, but we can definitely see why this tops the Telegraph’s list of Europe’s most ‘naff’ attractions.
Coming in second was Leicester Square in London. You could argue that this spot is less of an attraction and more of a place-where-lots-of-famous-things-are, but either way it is undoubtedly one of the more stressful places to exist in London. As Telegraph writer Rob Crossan puts it, this is like ‘Las Vegas… if it was run by Michael O’Leary’.
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The Blue Lagoon in Iceland was crowned the third-most underwhelming spot in Europe. According to Crossan this is not the Nordic spa-fantasy that you might be imagining, but instead has ‘the ambience of an airport lounge dipped in grimy water’. He describes it as ‘human soup’, which is definitely not the sort of vibe you’re looking for if you want a relaxing afternoon.
The most underwhelming tourist attractions in Europe
These are the continent’s most disappointing tourist attractions that you should definitely avoid, according to the Telegraph.
- Juliet’s Balcony, Verona
- Leicester Square, London
- The Blue Lagoon, Iceland
- The Blarney Stone, Ireland
- The Reeperbahn, Hamburg
- Manneken Pis, Brussels
- The Mona Lisa, Paris
- A Venice gondola ride
- The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen
- John O’Groats, Scotland
Did you see that tourists will have to pay to see Rome’s Trevi Fountain from next year?
Plus: This European capital has opened two new ‘museum stations’ packed with archaeological treasures.
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