The Population of European Cities from 700 to 2000

Abstract

This article presents an expanded dataset of the historical urban population in Europe, European urban population, 700–2000 (https://www.doi.org/10.17026/dans-xzy-u62q). This dataset contains new and improved estimates of the urban population (in thousands of inhabitants) between the years 700 and 2000 in 2,262 European settlements, including European cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The dataset is based on previous historical demographic sources that have been critically assessed and systematically complemented with new population estimates for additional time windows, deriving from either quantitative sources or proxies. Missing data are covered by city-specific and time-specific imputations. The applied time windows are whole centuries before 1500 and half a century afterwards. The article discusses the robustness checks that have been performed to validate the reliability of the imputed numerical results.