Mapping Diversity
Women have been erased from Zagreb’s history
Only nine percent of the streets in 30 large European cities are named after women: a sign that women's contributions to the history of cities have been not just forgotten, but erased. A municipal committee in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, wants to change the situation, but a series of obstacles is slowing down progress.
Kyiv’s street names are being heavily de-russified
About 500 streets in Kyiv have been renamed since 2014 – many of them changed their name after the military aggression by Russia in 2022. Ukrainian and Western history and figures have now taken the place of Soviet or Russian ones.
Who are Italy’s city streets dedicated to?
Only a handful of streets in Italy’s major cities are dedicated to women. And those women are mostly religious figures.
The most popular figures in the street names of European capitals
We have compiled a ranking of the 100 men and women that appear most frequently in the toponyms of 15 European capitals. There’s a lot of saints and white men from the 19th and 20th century, but there’s also quite a few actresses and female Nobel laureates.