Vacation Destinations In Europe Where You're Least Likely To Get Pickpocketed

Exiting the crowded Paris Metro, I saw my bag was unzipped. I reached in to reassure myself I could still feel the familiar shapes of my wallet and passport, and I felt the wind knock out of me when I realized my passport wasn't there anymore. Frantically, I started searching my pockets, turning my purse inside out. Not there. I got up to retrace my steps and was almost knocked over by a man running down the tunnel, followed quickly by an officer in hot pursuit. "Mademoiselle!" he called as he tossed my passport at me before taking off after the pickpocket. It was the happiest ending I could have imagined compared to the thousands of unlucky tourists facing pickpockets every year while visiting Europe.

Losing your valuables is a pain at the best of times. If you are in a foreign country, faced with navigating unfamiliarity and bureaucracy to replace them, it can be enough to ruin your trip. There are tons of tips for avoiding pickpockets (including a viral TikTok clothing hack) but sometimes you just want to relax. While nowhere is completely free of thieves, some European destinations have lower crime rates than others. If you want to play the odds and spend your vacation in a place where you're statistically less likely to encounter pickpockets, then head to Ireland or Montenegro.

Leprechauns may have to resort to sneaky tactics to protect their pots of gold, but generally, your belongings are pretty safe in the Emerald Isle. In a pickpocketing study by Quotezone.co.uk, Ireland ranked last out of the ten European tourist destinations that receive the highest rates of British tourists. Since pickpockets don't target only British tourists, I think it's safe to extrapolate the findings to all of us.

The study compiled mentions of "pickpockets" and "stolen" in online travel reviews in each of the European countries surveyed, and ranked them from most (Italy — specifically the Trevi Fountain) to least. Reviews for the Guinness Storehouse, The Book of Kells and the Old Library Exhibition, Killarney National Park, Irish Whiskey Museum, and Temple Bar mentioned the keywords a mere seven times for every million visitors. Compare that to 478 per million at Italy's Colosseum, Duomo of Milan, Uffizi Gallery, Trevi Fountain, and Pantheon ... the numbers show how Italy is the country with the highest amount of pickpocketing in Europe. Rounding out the bottom five are Portugal, Turkey, Greece, and Poland.

Montenegro isn't the tourist hotspot that its neighbor Croatia has become, or the Italian powerhouse that sits just across the Adriatic Sea, but it does hold delight for visitors. One Trip Advisor user gushes about Kotor Old Town, "Amazing! Wonderful! Impressive! It's difficult even only to find a way to describe it, you can only enjoy with your own eyes." In addition to its pretty beaches, awe-inspiring mountains, and medieval villages, one of those charms is a low theft rate. Eurostat collects crime statistics of European nations, and when it comes to thievery rankings, the Balkan country of Montenegro has the lowest. At just 55.04 thefts reported to police per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, you can rest assured your things are fairly safe. The Eurostat statistics don't specifically address the number of pickpocketing incidents tourists fall victim to, but they do differentiate theft (non-violent stealing) from robbery (stealing by force or under threat of violence). The other lowest-theft countries are Cyprus, Albania, Slovakia and Serbia.