Liechtenstein 🇱🇮

Filed under Europe and more precisely Western Europe, Liechtenstein is a sovereign state. The long form of the name is Principality of Liechtenstein. The capital is Vaduz.

Its territory runs to 160 km², which ranks it 224th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Aruba and just ahead of the British Virgin Islands. That makes it roughly half the size of the Maldives.

Some 40,450 people call it home, placing it 215th of 249 by population — between Sint Maarten above it and the British Virgin Islands below. Within Western Europe alone it is the 7th largest of 8 and the 7th most populous.

Liechtenstein is doubly landlocked: not one of its 2 neighbours touches the open sea either. Austria and Switzerland are landlocked in turn, so cargo has to cross at least two international borders — reaching Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia — before it can be loaded onto a ship. Only two countries in the world are doubly landlocked, and Liechtenstein is one of them; the other is Uzbekistan.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Liechtenstein's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Liechtenstein's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Coastal countries two borders away:

• 🇩🇪 Germany
• 🇫🇷 France
• 🇮🇹 Italy
• 🇸🇮 Slovenia

Plotted on a globe it falls at 47.3° north, 9.5° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,262 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Saint Pierre and Miquelon — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

2 countries share a land border with it: Austria and Switzerland. The largest of them by area is Austria, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 18.2 million people.

It has no sea coast of its own. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, and it means every shipment in or out has to cross someone else's border first. 2 of its neighbours, Austria and Switzerland, are landlocked too. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Liechtenstein ranks 224th of 249 by area and 215th by population. That works out at less than a thousandth of a percent of the combined land area of all 249 entries and less than a thousandth of a percent of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Liechtenstein in the size ordering are Aruba at 180 km² and British Virgin Islands at 151 km², against Liechtenstein's 160 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Liechtenstein averages 253 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 60th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Density comes out at around 253 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

The one official language is German. It shares that with Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and Namibia.

The demonym is Liechtensteiner, so residents are Liechtensteiners.

Inside Europe it places 47th of 53 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Western Europe.

Zoom in from the world to Western Europe and Liechtenstein sits 7th of 8 by population and 7th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Luxembourg just above and Monaco just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Germany is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Western Europe has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
• 🇲🇨 Monaco
• 🇩🇪 Germany

Liechtenstein does not have the Swiss franc to itself. It is one of 2 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is CHF, and the other one is listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in CHF travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. German is listed for 5 entries here, Liechtenstein among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Swiss franc (Fr, CHF). It shares that currency with Switzerland.

Vaduz is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

The top-level domain is .li. The international dialling code is +423. In ISO terms it is li in two letters and LIE in three.

Liechtenstein is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.