Map oddities
Corridors, enclaves and tripoints: the shapes that make you look twice.
- Akrotiri and DhekeliaA British territory in Cyprus with no border posts and Cypriot villages inside it.
- Andorra, the country with two princesIts two heads of state are a Spanish bishop and the French president. Neither is Andorran.
- Antarctica’s claimsSeven countries sliced it like a pie. One slice was never claimed, and a 1959 treaty froze the rest.
- Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-NassauBelgium and the Netherlands in more than 30 pieces, with the border running through houses and shops.
- BaikonurKazakh land that Russia rents for $115 million a year: where Sputnik and Gagarin launched.
- Baja California, one peninsula, two statesThe north half became a state in 1952. The south half waited until 1974.
- Bir TawilThe land neither Egypt nor Sudan wants, because claiming it would mean giving up something better.
- BorneoThe only island in the world shared by three countries. Its name probably comes from one of them: Brunei.
- Bouvet IslandThe world’s loneliest island: Norwegian, ice-covered, empty, and 1,600 km from any other land.
- Brčko DistrictPeace talks couldn’t decide which half of Bosnia got Brčko, so it belongs to both and is run by neither.
- Büsingen and Campione d’ItaliaA German village and an Italian one, both inside Switzerland, whose football clubs play in the Swiss league.
- CabindaAngola’s oil province, cut off from Angola by a corridor Portugal granted King Leopold’s Congo in 1885.
- Ceuta and MelillaTwo Spanish cities on Morocco’s coast, and the EU’s only land borders with Africa.
- Clipperton IslandA French atoll off Mexico, a forgotten Mexican garrison, and a king who settled whose it was.
- Doubly landlocked countriesTo reach the sea from Liechtenstein or Uzbekistan, you have to cross at least two borders.
- Guantánamo BayA US base on a 1903 lease Cuba can’t end alone, for rent Cuba has refused to cash since 1959.
- Heard Island and McDonald IslandsAustralia’s tallest mountain is an active volcano on an empty island 4,100 km from Perth.
- Hong KongPart of China since 1997, with its own border, currency, passports and courts.
- JungholzAn Austrian village joined to Austria at a single mountaintop. Every road into it comes from Germany.
- KaliningradA piece of Russia with no land link to Russia, and a German city until 1945.
- KazungulaMaps show four countries meeting here. Up close it’s two tripoints, and a bridge curving to miss both.
- Lake ConstanceThree countries share the lake, and across most of it no treaty says where one ends.
- LiberlandA patch of Danube forest neither Croatia nor Serbia claims, declared a country in 2015.
- LlíviaA Spanish town surrounded by France, because in 1659 it counted as a town, not a village.
- MacauPortuguese for more than four centuries, and still with its own border, currency and passports.
- Macquarie IslandThe only place on Earth where rock from the mantle is being pushed up above the sea.
- Madha and NahwaA piece of Oman inside the UAE, with a piece of the UAE inside that.
- MärketA lighthouse was built on the wrong side of a border, so the border was bent around it.
- MolossiaA Nevada house with a president, a navy of inflatable boats and a currency pegged to cookie dough.
- MusandamOman’s side of the Strait of Hormuz, cut off from the rest of Oman by the UAE.
- NeumBosnia’s only seaside town, left over from a 1699 buffer zone, now bypassed by a Croatian bridge.
- Neutral MoresnetA zinc mine two countries couldn’t split, so it became a neutral mini-country for a century.
- Newfoundland, the country that joined CanadaIt voted no to Canada in the 1860s, went bankrupt in the 1930s and joined in 1949 by 52.3%.
- OecusseWhere Portugal first landed on Timor. The Dutch wanted it gone; it’s now cut off from the rest of its country.
- Pheasant IslandA river islet that is Spanish from February to July and French from August to January.
- Point Roberts and the Northwest AngleTwo pieces of the United States you can only drive to through Canada.
- Quintana Roo, the territory that kept disappearingAbolished twice, split between its neighbours once, and still made a state in 1974.
- Russian AmericaRussia’s colony in North America, which once flew its flag in California and Hawaii.
- Saint Martin, one island, two countriesCross a road on this Caribbean island and you leave France and the EU for the Netherlands, unchecked.
- SealandA wartime sea fort declared a principality in 1967, with a royal family and a survived “coup”.
- SlowjamastanEleven acres of California desert whose Sultan bans Crocs, mumble rap and reply-all emails.
- SvalbardNorwegian since 1920, on one condition: every signatory country gets the same rights there.
- TemburongA piece of Brunei was cut off in 1890. For 130 years the way there was by boat or through Malaysia.
- The Cooch Behar enclaves162 scraps of India and Bangladesh inside each other, some three deep, swapped overnight in 2015.
- The Cyprus Green LineCyprus’s dividing line began in 1963 as a stroke of green pencil on a map of Nicosia.
- The Diomede IslandsRussia and the US, 4 km apart, and a whole day apart too: the date line runs between them.
- The Fergana Valley enclavesSoviet lines through a crowded valley left pockets of three countries inside one another.
- The International Date LineSamoa lived 4 July 1892 twice, then skipped 30 December 2011. No treaty says where the line goes.
- The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands: not part of the UKThey have the King but not the UK: no MPs at Westminster, their own laws and taxes, and never in the EU.
- The Order of MaltaIt has ambassadors to over 100 countries, its own passports and stamps, and no territory beyond two buildings.
- The Siliguri CorridorA strip about 22 km wide that is India’s only land link to its eight northeastern states.
- The Suwałki GapAbout 65 km of Polish and Lithuanian land is all that connects the Baltic states to the rest of NATO.
- The Torres Strait IslandsAustralian islands just over 3 km off Papua New Guinea, where a treaty lets neighbours keep crossing.
- The VennbahnA ribbon of Belgian railway land runs through Germany, cutting off five German exclaves. It’s now a bike path.
- The world’s exclavesFrom Kaliningrad to a few Belgian fields: the kinds of cut-off land, and why so many survive.
- TreriksrösetThree countries meet at a concrete cairn in a lake that drains two ways, to the Baltic and the Atlantic.
- Tsushima, the island between Japan and KoreaA Japanese island from which you can see Korea’s second city on a clear day.
- Vatican CityThe world’s smallest country, made in 1929 after the popes refused to leave for almost 60 years.
- When Western Australia voted to leave AustraliaIn 1933, two-thirds of Western Australians voted to quit Australia. London said it couldn’t help.
Enclaves, exclaves and corridors
An enclave is territory completely surrounded by another country, like Lesotho inside South Africa. An exclave is a piece of a country cut off from the rest, like Russia's Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania. Some places are both: the Belgian enclaves in the Dutch town of Baarle-Nassau are Belgian exclaves too.
Corridors are thin strips that give a country access to somewhere, like Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor reaching to China. Most oddities have a story behind them, usually a treaty, a land swap or a medieval inheritance that the modern border kept. The articles here explain how each one came about.