The Smallest Countries in the World You’ll Want to Visit

Tiny nations, odd borders, and places you only see after 12 zoom-ins on Google Maps. Here’s where to travel if you want to visit the ten smallest countries in the world.

Independent nations packed into a few hundred square kilometers or less. Blink and you’ll miss them on a map, but they’re packed with history, power plays, and the kind of weird stuff you only find when a place is fighting to stay visible.

We’re not here for trivia, but to show you a list of places you can visit, cross entirely on foot, and leave wondering how the hell they fit a whole government in there.

1. Vatican City

Location: Rome, Italy.
Size: 0.19 square miles / 0.49 square kilometers.
Population: About 800 (almost all clergy, Swiss Guards, and museum workers).

The Vatican is the world’s smallest country, carved out of central Rome. It exists thanks to the 1929 Lateran Treaty, when Italy gave the Holy See full sovereignty to settle a long, messy standoff. Why go? Two words: art and power. St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo, Raphael — all crammed inside this walled microstate. And then there’s the surreal political layer: you’re standing inside a religious empire that commands over a billion followers, yet has no airport, no army (those Swiss Guards don’t count), and no permanent citizens.

What to do:

• Tour the Vatican Museums (early morning tickets = fewer crowds).
• Climb St. Peter’s dome for a view across Rome.
• Watch the Pope give his Wednesday audience in St. Peter’s Square. Even if you’re not Catholic, it’s a scene.

Don’t expect:
A passport stamp or any wild nightlife scene. After all, you’re in the headquarters of the Catholic Church.

2. Monaco

Location: French Riviera.
Size: 0.78 square miles / 2.02 square kilometers.
Population: Around 39,000 — making it the most densely populated country on Earth.

Monaco is where Europe’s old-money royalty and new-money billionaires brush shoulders, all inside a postage-stamp strip of coast. It’s a constitutional monarchy ruled by the Grimaldi family for over 700 years, wedged between France and the Mediterranean. Why so small? It lost almost half its land in the 1800s to survive politically, and turned what was left into a high-rolling, tax-free playground.

Visitors come here for the spectacle:

• yachts so big they need a crew just for the wine list
• the marble-and-gold Monte Carlo Casino (tourists welcome, but dress sharp)
• the Grand Prix, where F1 cars tear through narrow streets past balconies packed with champagne-sipping spectators.

Prefer quiet? Go off-season, walk the old town, and watch the sunset over a kingdom the size of a city block.

3. Nauru

Location: Micronesia, Pacific Ocean.
Size: 8.11 square miles / 21 square kilometers.
Population: About 10,800.

Blink and you’ll miss it (and honestly, most airlines already do). Nauru is the world’s smallest island country and third-smallest overall, floating far off in the Pacific with no real tourist infrastructure and just one commercial airline flying in. Its size is central to its wild economic history, as Nauru was once one of the richest countries per capita, thanks to phosphate mining that stripped the island nearly bare. When the boom ended, so did the money — leaving behind surreal relics of collapsed wealth.

If you make the trip (and it’s no casual hop), you’ll circle the whole country in under an hour by car:

• Visit the phosphate ruins,
• Explore the coral coastline
• Meet locals who’ll be surprised to see a tourist
• Get a rare passport stamp most travelers will never collect

Just don’t expect fancy resorts or packaged tours, because Nauru’s charm lies in its off-grid, almost-forgotten presence.

4. Tuvalu

Location: Polynesia, Pacific Ocean.
Size: 10 square miles / 26 square kilometers.
Population: Around 11,200.

Tuvalu is the kind of place you fly to once — and then tell people for the rest of your life. Remote, flat, and constantly under threat from rising seas, it’s the second-smallest country by population and fourth by land area. Formerly known as the Ellice Islands, Tuvalu became fully independent from the UK in 1978. Since then, it’s been famous for two things: being near-impossible to reach and selling its lucrative .tv internet domain rights.

What’s here? A narrow atoll lined with palm trees, coral reefs, and pastel houses. You can:

• stroll the main island’s only street
• watch local fishermen haul in their catch
• join a community event — Tuvaluans are famously welcoming, and travelers are rare enough to draw real attention.

Flights are infrequent (usually from Fiji), and accommodations are basic, but the payoff is visiting one of the world’s least-touristed, most vulnerable countries, before it quite literally disappears.

5. San Marino

Location: Italian peninsula, near Rimini.
Size: 23.5 square miles / 61 square kilometers.
Population: About 33,600.

San Marino claims to be the world’s oldest republic, dating back to the year 301 — yes, you read that right. This tiny landlocked country sits on a mountaintop inside Italy, overlooked by most travelers speeding past to the Adriatic coast. It survived centuries of European wars, Napoleon, and Italian unification by staying just small and diplomatic enough to be left alone.

Picture-perfect medieval towers perched on Monte Titano, narrow stone streets twisting through the historic center, and sweeping views down over Italian farmland.

There’s no airport, so you’ll arrive by car or bus, but once you’re there, it’s a walkable wonder:

• Climb the fortress walls
• Visit the quirky museums (yes, they have a torture museum)
• Collect a passport stamp from the tourist office — a fun souvenir, even if it’s not legally required.

6. Liechtenstein

Location: Between Switzerland and Austria.
Size: 61.8 square miles / 160 square kilometers.
Population: About 39,000.

A wealthy alpine microstate wedged between giants, Liechtenstein is ruled by a prince who actually lives in the castle overlooking the capital, Vaduz. It’s been here since the Holy Roman Empire days, carefully dodging annexations and alliances to keep its borders intact. Travelers visit Liechtenstein for its snow-dusted peaks, medieval castles, and tidy little towns, all without the crowds you’d find next door in Switzerland:

• Hike the Prince’s Way trail for alpine views
• Wander Vaduz’s art museums
• If you’re feeling particularly niche — visit the local stamp museum.

Just don’t come expecting glitz: the country is rich, but it’s quietly so. This is a place where the royal family bikes around town and the entire nation’s military budget is… well, non-existent.

7. Marshall Islands

Location: Micronesia, Pacific Ocean.
Size: 70 square miles. / 181 square kilometers.
Population: About 42,000.

The Marshall Islands are a sprawl of coral atolls and islands scattered across the central Pacific — a place you’d probably miss unless you’re seriously into nuclear history or remote diving spots. Once under U.S. administration (after heavy World War II fighting), the country gained full sovereignty in 1986 but still maintains close ties, including a Compact of Free Association that lets many Marshallese live and work in the U.S.

Travel here is raw and fascinating:

• Explore Majuro, the capital atoll, where narrow strips of land connect villages and lagoons.
• History buffs can visit Bikini Atoll, site of the infamous U.S. nuclear tests — though tourism there is tightly controlled.
• For divers, the Marshall Islands offer some of the world’s least-crowded coral reefs and shipwrecks.

Getting here is a commitment (think long-haul flights from Honolulu), but you’ll land in one of the least-visited and most geopolitically curious nations on the planet.

8. Saint Kitts and Nevis

Location: Caribbean, west of Antigua.
Size: 101 square miles. / 261 square kilometers.
Population: About 47,000.

Saint Kitts and Nevis is the smallest sovereign state in the Americas — and the tiniest independent country anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Two volcanic islands, one federation, and a long history of sugar, colonial power struggles, and piracy — today, it’s a laid-back Caribbean escape that mixes old British charm with turquoise waters and rainforest-covered peaks.

Visitors usually split their time between:

• wandering the pastel-colored streets of Basseterre (the capital)
• lounging on quiet beaches
• hiking up Mount Liamuiga, a dormant volcano offering panoramic island views.

Over on Nevis, things slow down even more, with historic sugar plantations turned boutique hotels and old-world architecture tucked into tiny coastal villages. If you’re into low-key tropical travel without the mega-resorts, this is your place.

9. Maldives

Location: Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka.
Size: 115 square miles. / 298 square kilometers (spread across 1,192 coral islands).
Population: About 521,000.

Maldives is a country made almost entirely of water — a chain of atolls scattered across the Indian Ocean, where the land barely rises above sea level. Independent since 1965, it’s become synonymous with ultra-luxury resorts, overwater villas, and honeymoon Instagram feeds. But beneath the glossy travel brochures is a place grappling with very real climate threats; the Maldives is one of the nations most vulnerable to sea-level rise, and its future is anything but guaranteed.

What to do here? Yes, you can drop thousands on a private island resort. But there’s also local life to explore:

• visit Malé, the bustling capital packed onto a single island;
• hop on a local ferry to see inhabited atolls beyond the resort bubble
• dive into the world-class coral reefs, where the real magic of the Maldives happens underwater.

10. Malta

Location: Mediterranean Sea, south of Sicily.
Size: 122 square miles. / 316 square kilometers.
Population: About 531,000.

Malta is small but stacked. This Mediterranean island nation has been a prize for every empire you can name: Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, the Knights of St. John, Napoleon, the British. That layered history shows up everywhere — in the honey-colored limestone streets of Valletta, in the medieval walled city of Medina, and even in the coastal fortresses staring out over turquoise waters.

For travelers, Malta offers a mash-up of cultures, languages, and landscapes:

• Wander through ancient alleyways
• dive to shipwrecks and underwater caves
• hop a ferry to Gozo for quieter, rural vibes.

The food scene mixes Italian, Arab, and British influences in a way that’s unmistakably Maltese. And the best part? You can cover the country’s highlights in just a few days — but you’ll leave feeling like you’ve crossed continents.

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