Welcome to Europe

Europe, one of the five parts of the world, located in the Northern hemisphere, delimited in the east by Asia, the south by the Mediterranean, the west by the Atlantic Ocean and the sea of Norway, in north by the Arctic Ocean.

Europe, with Asia, fact part of the continental system of Eurasia. By convention, the geographers consider that the border between Asia and Europe corresponds to the Ural Mountains, the Ural river to the Caspian Sea and to the Straits of the Bosphorus by including a small part of Turkey and sometimes the Caucasus. This delimitation by natural barriers is however partly arbitrary. Islands or archipelagoes of the Atlantic are attached to Europe:Iceland, the Azores, the Canaries or Svalbard in the Arctic.

Very early, the geographical direction and the origin of the Europe term intrigued the historians. Greek mythology says to us that Europe was one of the océanides, or the girl of a legendary king of Phénicie, liked of Zeus which removed it. The legend wants that his/her brothers left to his research and founded several cities. Hérodote, in its Stories, wrote on this subject that Europe, born in Asia, probably never went on the continent.

Of a surface of 10 525 000 km2, Europe is smallest of the parts of the world (6,75 p. 100 of the emerged grounds). Its restricted dimensions are however compensated by a central position compared to the other emerged grounds. Europe has the appearance of a peninsula of Asia, vis-a-vis in America. It is joined almost in Africa, from which it is separate in south-west only by the Straits of Gibraltar. Its maritime frontages, because of the deep penetration of the sea in the interior of the grounds, have a very significant development: Europe has 32 000 km of coasts including 13 500 km of Atlantic coasts and 12 700 km of Mediterranean shores.

The Northern course, located in Norway, is the most septentrional point of the European continent, the southernmost point being in Punta de Tarifa, in the south of Spain, close to Gibraltar. If one disregards mount Elbrous (5 642 m) located in the chain of the Caucasus, in extreme cases of Asia, the highest top of the continent is the Mount Blanc (4 810 m), in the Alps, in France. The sector low of Europe is the depression where the Caspian Sea is placed, to 28 m below the zero sailor.