AlbaniaCapital: Tirana. Its coast faces Italy across the Strait of Otranto. Less than 72 kilometers wide, it is where the Adriatic meets the Ionian Sea. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
Bosnia and HerzegovinaCapital: Sarajevo. Its whole coastline is about 20 kilometers. That is the shortest of the six countries on the Adriatic. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
CroatiaCapital: Zagreb. Counting its islands it has 5,835 kilometers of Adriatic coast. That is more than the other five Adriatic countries put together. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
FranceCapital: Paris. It has an Atlantic coast and a Mediterranean one. Monaco sits on its Mediterranean shore. United Nations region: Western Europe.
GreeceCapital: Athens. It has the longest Mediterranean coastline of any country. Its coast is indented and it has many islands. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
ItalyCapital: Rome. Sicily and Sardinia are both part of it. They are the two largest islands in the Mediterranean. The Adriatic is on its east side, and the Ionian Sea is off its toe and heel. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
MaltaCapital: Valletta. It lies 80 kilometers south of Italy. It is 284 kilometers east of Tunisia and 333 kilometers north of Libya, and covers 316 square kilometers. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
MonacoCapital: Monaco, a city-state. At 2.08 square kilometers it is the second-smallest country in the world, with France on three sides and the sea on the fourth. United Nations region: Western Europe.
MontenegroCapital: Podgorica. It has about 260 kilometers of Adriatic coast, islands included. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
SloveniaCapital: Ljubljana. Its coast is 46.6 kilometers long. All of it is at the north end of the Adriatic. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
SpainCapital: Madrid. Its south coast is the Alboran Sea's north shore. That sea is the westernmost part of the Mediterranean, which ends at the Strait of Gibraltar. United Nations region: Southern Europe.
Asia 5
CyprusCapital: Nicosia. The island lies in the Levantine Sea. That is the Mediterranean's easternmost part. United Nations region: Western Asia. European Union member since 2004.
IsraelOn the Levantine Sea, the Mediterranean's easternmost part. United Nations region: Western Asia.
LebanonCapital: Beirut. Its whole coast is on the Levantine Sea. That is the Mediterranean's easternmost part. United Nations region: Western Asia.
SyriaCapital: Damascus. Its Levantine Sea coast is between Turkey and Lebanon. United Nations region: Western Asia.
TurkeyCapital: Ankara. The Dardanelles and Bosporus both lie in it. They link the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara and Black Sea. United Nations region: Western Asia.
Africa 5
AlgeriaCapital: Algiers. Its coast's west end is on the Alboran Sea. That sea is the westernmost part of the Mediterranean, shared with Morocco and Spain. United Nations region: Northern Africa.
EgyptCapital: Cairo. The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, runs through it. The canal links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea without a single lock. United Nations region: Northern Africa.
LibyaCapital: Tripoli. Malta lies 333 kilometers to its north, across open sea. United Nations region: Northern Africa.
MoroccoCapital: Rabat. The Strait of Gibraltar separates it from the Iberian Peninsula. The strait, 14 kilometers wide, joins the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. United Nations region: Northern Africa.
TunisiaCapital: Tunis. The Strait of Sicily lies between it and Sicily. About 145 kilometers wide, it divides the western Mediterranean from the eastern. United Nations region: Northern Africa.
How this list was compiled: The list is the 21 member states of the United Nations with a coast on the Mediterranean Sea or an island state in it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea (the countries in clockwise order, with Cyprus and Malta as island countries; Greece with the longest Mediterranean coastline; Sicily and Sardinia as the two largest islands; the Strait of Gibraltar at 14 km; the Suez Canal, opened in 1869 and without locks; its length is left out because sources disagree) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mediterranean_countries (the three coasts; Portugal, Serbia, Jordan and others as countries sometimes called Mediterranean without a coast on the sea), checked 2026-09-19. Membership of the United Nations: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/member-states, checked 2026-09-19 (all 21 are on the list of member states). The grouping by continent is the United Nations M49 list, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/, checked 2026-09-19: Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Türkiye under Western Asia, Monaco under Western Europe, the five African states under Northern Africa. Shapes of the drawing that the points file flags, and places that are not member states, are not on this list and are never asked. Capitals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Europe, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Africa and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_capitals, checked 2026-09-19. Parts of the sea and lengths of coast, all checked 2026-09-19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_Sea (the six Adriatic countries and the table of coastline lengths), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Otranto, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionian_Sea, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegean_Sea, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levantine_Sea, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alboran_Sea, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Sicily, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco. The year Cyprus joined the European Union: https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/eu-countries_en, checked 2026-09-19. Positions in the hints were read off the drawing; the "largest shape" hint was checked against the areas of the drawn shapes, which an equal-area projection keeps in proportion. The views of the three groups were computed from the outlines and rings of their members with the padding rule the drawing's own groups use. Hints and detail lines written for this site. Licence: own work
The drawing: Drawn for this site from Natural Earth 5.1.2, ne_50m_admin_0_countries_lakes (scale 1:50,000,000), https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/v5.1.2/geojson/ne_50m_admin_0_countries_lakes.geojson, downloaded 2026-09-19. Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection centred on 30°N 23°E. Outlines simplified; small islands are left out. 2 places are too small to draw at this scale and shown as a dot. Licence: public domain (Natural Earth terms of use: https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/)
How it works
This Mediterranean map quiz asks the 21 countries with a coast on the sea, from Spain round to Morocco, with Malta and Cyprus in the water. Find it names one to tap. Name it lights one up to type.
Read the full guide
The 21 countries, clockwise from Spain
Eleven are European: Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Greece. Five are Asian: Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Five are African: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The United Nations list does the sorting: all of Turkey counts as Asia, all of Egypt as Africa.
Three shore buttons and seven rings
Europe (11), Asia (5) and Africa (5) each zoom the map to one shore. Seven countries are too small to tap, so each has a numbered ring: Monaco, Malta, Slovenia, Montenegro, Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel. Monaco and Malta are drawn as dots. Of the two ringed countries on the east shore, Lebanon is the northern one.
Six share the Adriatic. Croatia's coast, islands included, runs 5,835 kilometers, Slovenia's 46.6, Bosnia and Herzegovina's about 20.
Portugal is drawn but never asked: its coast is all Atlantic. Jordan and Serbia have no Mediterranean shore either.
The sea narrows twice: to 14 kilometers at Gibraltar, where Spain faces Morocco, and about 145 between Tunisia and Sicily.
Questions and answers
How many countries border the Mediterranean Sea?
This page asks 21: every member state of the United Nations with a Mediterranean coast, Malta and Cyprus included. Some lists count 22 or more by adding places that are not member states. Those outlines are drawn and never asked or counted.
Why is Cyprus under Asia when it is in the European Union?
The three buttons follow the United Nations statistics list, which sorts countries by location. It files Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel under Western Asia. Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004 and is one of the 27 members on the European Union map quiz.
Which smaller seas are part of the Mediterranean?
West to east, five of its arms are the Alboran Sea off Morocco, the Adriatic east of Italy, the Ionian west of Greece, the Aegean east of it, and the Levantine around Cyprus. The Ionian holds the deepest point, the Calypso Deep, 5,109 meters down.