Europe’s Best Cities & Neighbourhoods for Street Art

When exploring most major European cities, tourists will inevitably stumble upon street art. Some will be small slices of graffiti hidden down a side street, while others can be 82 metres tall murals sprawling up the side of a building, such as St. George’s Tower in Leicester, England, Europe’s tallest street art. ^[1]

At the end of 2022, #StreetArt on TikTok had over 4.2 billion views. Tourists love to get a shot of unique murals that they won’t find anywhere else, with part of the excitement coming from the fact that they may not be there forever. 

Taking a look at Europe’s major cities, we decided to find out which cities have the best street art scene as well as the neighbourhoods within those cities.

We reviewed where has the most art registered online, which areas have the highest-rated art pieces, and how many tourists post about these paintings on TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. Below is our full analysis of Europe’s street art cities and neighbourhoods.

Key street art statistics:

• Shoreditch, London, is Europe’s hotspot for street art, having the best combination of social media engagement for the district’s street art, as well as volume and quality of art pieces registered online. 
• London, UK, was the best city overall for street art, and was the most engaged city on social media for street art, including having over 28 million views on TikTok for street art content in the capital.
• Trastevere, Rome, is the most popular neighbourhood for street art on social media apps, racking up over 1 million posts specifically about street art in the area on TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. 
• The most popular art neighbourhoods in Europe have an average of 51 pieces of street art registered online (rated an average 4.5/5 on Google Maps) meaning many are hidden awaiting tourists to discover them down winding side streets. 
• TikToks about street art in popular European cities get an average of 4.24 million views per post.

What is street art?

England’s Tate Modern refers to street art as being “related to graffiti art in that it is created in public locations and is usually unsanctioned”. They do emphasise, however, that it is not just graffiti in public, and it can cover “a wider range of media and is more connected with graphic design”. ^[2]

Street art can be a lot of things and different styles will appeal to different people. In this study, we used Google Maps’ own categorisation of street art, travel blogs, as well as Street Art Cities’ data, which is the biggest street art community in the world. This data was then coupled with figures from TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest to show how popular areas were for their street art by public engagement on social media.

The best neighbourhoods in Europe for street art

Out of 100 of the most popular neighbourhoods in Europe, the best neighbourhood for street art was discovered to be Shoreditch in London, England. Often referred to as the city’s ‘creative hub’, Shoreditch scored an average of 6.17/10 in our analysis based on a mix of user ratings, online street art directories, and social media engagement. 

The district is but a stone’s throw away from Liverpool Street Station, the third busiest rail station in London, bringing in millions of tourists each year looking to roam the unique stores and eateries in the area.^[3] They should also be checking out the high-quality selection of street art and graffiti too. 

On average, all European neighbourhoods in our study had 51 pieces of street art registered online each, and Shoreditch fit this European average exactly at 51. While the area’s volume of art recorded online can be considered statistically average, the London district has a large street art impact on social media. With 145,000 tagged street art posts on Instagram (with many more untagged) and almost 250 pins on Pinterest, Shoreditch attracts a lot of attention. In addition to that, the district has one of Europe’s highest ratings for street art in Europe, with each piece reviewed having an average of 4.9/5 stars on Google Maps. 

In second place after Shoreditch, was the borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany, followed by the historic neighbourhood of Lavapiés, neighborhood near Madrid’s main train station Atocha, in Spain.

Top 10 European neighbourhoods for street art

The top ten neighbourhoods in Europe for street art can be seen in the table below. 

The best cities in Europe for street art 

With Shoreditch being the best neighbourhood in Europe, it may come as no surprise to find that London is the best overall city for street art, with Paris, France, in a close second, and where you can find street art works near the main stations, Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est or Gare de Lyon. 

London, on the other hand, had one of the highest average ratings (4.6/5) for its street art on Google Maps, while having 235 pieces registered online. Taking into account data from Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok, London was also the most engaged city on social media when it came to street art, followed by Paris. 

While the French capital was second in this study, it did have the highest increase in street art registered online (11.8%), followed by Amsterdam (9.8%) which did not make the top five. 

The top five cities for street art in Europe can be seen in the table below:

Street art on social media

Part of the study reviewed TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest data in relation to posts about street art in each of the 100 neighbourhoods analysed across the European cities. When looking at   just social media data points, Rome’s Trastevere neighbourhood comes out on top. 

Trastevere is located across the Tiber River from the likes of the Colosseum and Trevi Fountain and is actually a highly protected area due to its historic buildings. Due to this, artists have focused on poster art more than graffiti as it’s more easily removed. Despite the area’s history, many tourists love roaming the small alleyways on the hunt for new art pieces. 

The top five neighbourhoods for street art on social media and what influences their popularity can be seen in the table below. 

Methodology 

Using a combination of geotagged online street art directories, travel blogs, and Google Maps, the study estimated the number of pieces of street art per city and neighbourhoods within those cities. Due to the nature of street art, it is impossible to collect every piece of street art as they are removed, replaced, and added to over time. 

Rating data was collected from Google Maps reviews of street art listed on 10/11/2022 for each neighbourhood analysed in each city in the study. Street art installations that were listed on Google Maps but did not have a rating were discounted from the average score for that part of the analysis. 

Social media data came from Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Instagram data refers to the number of posts geotagged on the platform related to both street art in the city as a whole and the specific neighbourhoods. TikTok data refers to the number of views videos get that focus on street art in that city and neighbourhood. Pinterest data refers to the number of pins content has relating to street art in the analysed neighbourhoods. For all platforms searches were performed for ‘street art in’ both neighbourhoods and cities, as well as specific hashtags such as #ShoreditchStreetArt or #StreetArtMitte as well as local language variants.

All of this data was scored using a normalised ten-point index per data point, then an average score was created across all categories including number of street art pieces registered, reviews online, and social media data.

Cities were chosen as those most visited in Europe and those most frequently mentioned alongside street art. Neighbourhoods in those cities were defined by Google by searching for ‘best neighbourhoods in’ each city. The study took the top ten neighbourhoods per city from Google’s results on 10/11/2022.

Sources

1. Bid Leicester, ‘St. George’s Tower’ (https://bidleicester.co.uk/st-georges-tower-mural/)
2. Tate, ‘Street Art’ (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/street-art)
3. Office of Rail and Road, ‘Estimates of Station Usage 2019-20’ (https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1906/station-usage-2019-20-statistical-release.pdf)

• Google Maps, Various cities and neighbourhoods (https://www.google.com/maps)
• Street Art Cities, Various cities and neighbourhoods (https://streetartcities.com/)
• Street Art Blog BLocal Travel, Various cities and neighbourhoods (https://www.blocal-travel.com/)
• Social media data collected from TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest.
• Euromonitor, ‘Top 100 City Destinations Index 2021’ (https://go.euromonitor.com/rs/805-KOK-719/images/wpTop100CitiesIndex2021-v0.4.pdf)
• Pigneto street art image from omino 71 via Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/omino71/13646500215)
• Other street art imagery sourced via Unsplash and Pixabay.