197 kingdoms, empires, republics and short-lived states from Europe that no longer exist, with the flags they flew and the story behind each one.
The civil ensign split 50/50, joining the Austrian red-white-red with Hungary's colors and both shields — the Dual Monarchy never agreed on a single flag for the whole empire.
Today part of: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia
The blue-white-red Pan-Slavic tricolor symbolized the union of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, flown by the Kingdom until the Axis invasion of 1941.
Today part of: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo
Tito's Partisans added a red, gold-bordered star to the tricolor; it marked the country's communist character until the federation's violent breakup in the 1990s.
Today part of: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo
Adopted in 1920 with a blue hoist wedge to tell it apart from Poland's flag. Czechia kept it after the 1993 split, despite a clause meant to bar successor states from reusing it.
Today part of: Czech Republic, Slovakia
The black-white-red tricolor combined Prussia's black-and-white with the Hanseatic red-and-white. It was officially adopted as the national flag only in 1892.
Today part of: Germany
The black-red-gold tricolor revived the colors of the 1848 liberal revolution, deliberately tying the new democracy to earlier anti-autocratic movements.
Today part of: Germany
The swastika flag of the Nazi regime, which started the Second World War in Europe and carried out the Holocaust, became Germany's sole national flag in 1935. It was banned after the regime's defeat in 1945; its public display is banned in Germany outside education, art and research, and the country returned to the black-red-gold of the Weimar era.
Today part of: Germany
The hammer-and-compass-in-wheat emblem represented workers, intelligentsia, and farmers. Before 1959 East and West Germany flew the identical plain tricolor.
Today part of: Germany
The black eagle on a white field derives from the Teutonic Knights. Prussia's black-and-white later supplied two of the three colors of the German Empire's flag.
Today part of: Germany
The gold hammer and sickle beneath a red star stood for the worker-peasant alliance. The exact shade and proportions were fixed by Soviet law in 1955.
Today part of: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia
The black double-headed eagle on gold was the Emperor's banner. Its two heads symbolized claimed authority over both the secular and the spiritual realms.
Today part of: Germany
The golden winged Lion of St Mark holds an open Gospel; by tradition the book was shown open in peacetime and the lion grasped a sword in war.
Today part of: Italy
The white Bourbon field carries an elaborate coat of arms of the many southern Italian domains the dynasty ruled, until Garibaldi's forces conquered it in 1860–61.
Today part of: Italy
The yellow-and-white vertical bicolor with the crossed keys of St Peter beneath the papal tiara is the direct ancestor of today's Vatican City flag.
Today part of: Vatican City
A white field with the red Savoy cross in a blue border. After 1848 Sardinia switched to the tricolor with the Savoy shield, which became the basis of the Kingdom of Italy's flag.
Today part of: Italy
The red cross of St George on white was Genoa's medieval ensign. By one account England paid Genoa in 1190 for the right to fly it for naval protection.
Today part of: Italy
Two white crosses and a gold crown on red, from the city's medieval arms. This League of Nations-administered free city was the flashpoint where World War II began.
Today part of: Poland
This Napoleonic sister republic in northern Italy flew a vertical green-white-red tricolor modeled on revolutionary France — a direct forerunner of the modern Italian flag.
Today part of: Italy
The red giglio — a stylized lily — on white was the emblem of the medieval commune. Florence reversed the earlier white-on-red Ghibelline lily to mark its Guelph allegiance.
Today part of: Italy
The black-and-white Balzana is said to recall the white and black smoke that rose when Siena's legendary founders Senius and Aschius made sacrifices on the city's hills.
Today part of: Italy
One of the smallest and least-known Italian maritime republics, this tiny Ligurian town governed itself for six centuries under the protection of allied Genoa.
Today part of: Italy
The white cross on red of the House of Savoy, the dynasty that ruled an Alpine state straddling France and Italy and eventually became the royal house of a united Italy.
Today part of: Italy
Ruled by the Este dynasty and later the Austrian Habsburg-Este line, the duchy flew a tricolour charged with the Este eagle until it was absorbed into unified Italy.
Today part of: Italy
The Gonzaga dynasty's duchy in the Po plain, a great Renaissance art and music centre, flew a flag quartered with their eagles and lions before passing to Austria.
Today part of: Italy
The Este capital and a brilliant Renaissance court; when the last legitimate Este duke died without heirs in 1597, the Pope reclaimed Ferrara for the Papal States.
Today part of: Italy
The Montefeltro and later Della Rovere dukes made Urbino one of the foremost humanist courts of the Renaissance, birthplace of the painter Raphael.
Today part of: Italy
A long-lived northern Italian march whose Aleramici marquises led crusades and even briefly held the throne of the Kingdom of Thessalonica.
Today part of: Italy
The independent southern kingdom before its 1816 merger with Sicily; its white flag bore the arms of the successive Aragonese, Spanish, and Bourbon dynasties that ruled it.
Today part of: Italy
Under Napoleon's marshal Joachim Murat, Naples flew a white field with a red border and a central emblem, before Murat was deposed and executed in 1815.
Today part of: Italy
A short-lived Napoleonic sister republic around Milan that flew a vertical green-white-red tricolour, soon merged with the Cispadane Republic to form the Cisalpine Republic.
Today part of: Italy
A Napoleonic republic proclaimed after French troops seized Rome and deposed Pope Pius VI; its black-white-red tricolour flew until Neapolitan and Austrian forces restored papal rule.
Today part of: Italy
Poet Gabriele D'Annunzio's quasi-anarchic statelet at Fiume, whose flag bore the constellation of Ursa Major and the motto 'Quis contra nos?' — 'Who is against us?'.
Today part of: Croatia
A free zone liberated by anti-Fascist partisans in the Alps near the Swiss border, self-governing for forty days in 1944 before German and Fascist forces retook it.
Today part of: Italy
A Piedmontese town held free by partisans for 23 days in 1944, immortalized in Beppe Fenoglio's novel 'I ventitré giorni della città di Alba'.
Today part of: Italy
Mussolini's German-backed rump state in northern Italy, often called the Republic of Salò; its war flag added a fasces-clutching eagle to the tricolour.
Today part of: Italy
The white eight-pointed Maltese cross on red is the Knights Hospitaller's 'works' flag; the eight points are traditionally said to represent the eight Beatitudes.
Today part of: Malta
The plain blue field with a white cross was the official land flag from 1822. The blue-and-white striped version initially served only as the naval ensign.
Today part of: Greece
The red saw-tooth saltire represents two crossed, roughly-pruned branches. It flew over Spanish armies and colonies across the Americas for nearly three centuries.
Today part of: Spain
The republican tricolor added a purple lower band popularly linked to Castile, replacing the red-yellow monarchist flag until Franco's victory in 1939.
Today part of: Spain
The green-white-red tricolor charged with the crowned shield of the House of Savoy, flown through both World Wars until the 1946 referendum abolished the monarchy.
Today part of: Italy
The white field strewn with golden fleurs-de-lis was the banner of the Bourbon monarchy. White, not a tricolor, symbolized the king before the Revolution.
Today part of: France
The red-white-red triband charged with the grand-ducal crown was used by the Habsburg-Lorraine grand dukes who ruled Florence and Tuscany.
Today part of: Italy
The red-over-yellow bicolor was Baden's flag from 1855. The southwestern grand duchy was one of the states that unified into the German Empire in 1871.
Today part of: Germany
King Ernst August introduced the yellow-over-white bicolor in 1837 when Hanover's personal union with Britain ended. Its emblem was the white Saxon horse.
Today part of: Germany
The white-and-blue lozenge 'Rautenflagge' derives from the medieval arms of the Wittelsbachs. By rule it must show at least 21 lozenges with a white one in the top-right.
Today part of: Germany
This Napoleonic kingdom, ruled by Jérôme Bonaparte, flew a white-and-blue bicolor with crowned arms combining a Napoleonic eagle with the silver Saxon horse.
Today part of: Germany
An anti-Bolshevik Cossack state on the Kuban river; its blue-raspberry-green bands stood for Cossacks, non-Cossack residents, and highlanders.
Today part of: Russia
The Don Cossack state's blue-yellow-red tricolor stood for the Don Cossacks, Kalmyks, and Russian non-Cossack residents during the Russian Civil War.
Today part of: Russia
Green and white stripes with a blue canton bearing seven stars for the seven main highland peoples of the North Caucasus.
Today part of: Russia
A Polish client state around Vilnius; its red field bore the Polish White Eagle and the Lithuanian Vytis knight side by side, before annexation by Poland in 1922.
Today part of: Lithuania
A pro-Russian Rusyn republic centered on Florynka in the western Lemko region, flying a blue-yellow-green tricolor after the collapse of Austria-Hungary.
Today part of: Poland
Red-and-white vertical stripes with three silver six-pointed stars — the civic banner of the Dutch cheese city of Gouda, of medieval origin.
Today part of: Netherlands
Daniele Manin's revolutionary Venetian republic flew the Italian tricolor with the winged Lion of St Mark in the canton, until Austria retook Venice in 1849.
Today part of: Italy
A tiny accidental republic on the Tuscan–Papal border, created by a surveying error and famous for freely growing tobacco. Its flag is divided black and white diagonally.
Today part of: Italy
A self-governing 'mixed county' of three villages on the Galicia–Portugal border with its own asylum rights, partitioned between Spain and Portugal in 1864.
Today part of: Spain
A neutral zinc-mining territory jointly administered by Prussia and the Netherlands (later Belgium) after the Congress of Vienna. Its flag is a black-white-blue tricolor.
Today part of: Belgium
A short-lived independent city-state — modern Rijeka, Croatia — created by the Treaty of Rapallo and annexed by Italy in 1924. Its flag is a burgundy-yellow-blue tricolor.
Today part of: Croatia
Autonomous Crete under Prince George of Greece; its blue flag with a white cross adds a red canton with a white star, symbolizing remaining Ottoman suzerainty.
Today part of: Greece
The brief principality under Prince Wilhelm of Wied: a deep-red field with a large black double-headed eagle, established just after Albanian independence.
Today part of: Albania
The green flag with gold lettering 'Irish Republic' flown over Dublin's General Post Office during the Easter Rising. The original captured banner survives in Dublin.
Today part of: Ireland
The Dutch revolutionary republic's flag placed a white canton on the tricolor enclosing a seated liberty maiden with a liberty-cap spear and the Dutch lion.
Today part of: Netherlands
A short-lived theocratic emirate under Uzun Hajji spanning Chechnya and Dagestan during the Russian Civil War; its green flag bears three white stars above a crescent.
Today part of: Russia
The Ukrainian anarchist movement under Nestor Makhno flew black banners reading 'Liberty or Death'. The popular skull-and-crossbones version is a debunked Soviet-propaganda myth.
Today part of: Ukraine
Abd el-Krim's Berber state during the Rif War: a red field with a white diamond holding a green crescent and a six-pointed star.
Today part of: Morocco
The white Moor's-head flag of the brief kingdom created when German adventurer Theodore von Neuhoff was crowned King of Corsica for a few months in 1736.
Today part of: France
Combined the British Union Jack with the Corsican Moor's head during the brief union under George III in the French Revolutionary Wars.
Today part of: France
The Catholic Confederation based at Kilkenny flew a green field with a gold harp and a white canton bearing a red cross during the Eleven Years' War.
Today part of: Ireland
A blue field with the golden Lion of St Mark holding seven arrows for the seven Ionian islands — the first autonomous Greek state of the modern era.
Today part of: Greece
A green-white-blue flag tied to a WWII Axis-sponsored Aromanian (Vlach) state in the Pindus mountains, whose actual existence is disputed by historians.
Today part of: Greece
A Napoleonic sister republic around the Adriatic port of Ancona, flying a light blue–yellow–red tricolor with the republic's name lettered across it.
Today part of: Italy
A short-lived Neapolitan sister republic that joined French blue with the yellow and red of Naples, crushed within months by a royalist peasant army.
Today part of: Italy
The Napoleonic-era republic of Valais flew a vertical red-and-white field with stars for its districts, before being absorbed directly into France.
Today part of: Switzerland
The first Italian horizontal red-white-green tricolor, with a central quiver of four arrows. Adopted on 7 January 1797, it is commemorated as Italy's Tricolour Day.
Today part of: Italy
The Adriatic merchant republic of Dubrovnik flew a white flag bearing St Blaise, its patron, holding a model of the walled city. Its motto was 'Libertas'.
Today part of: Croatia
A red eagle perched on three green hills on white — the arms of Nice during its centuries under the House of Savoy, before France annexed it in 1860.
Today part of: France
The white-over-green Landesfarben of the Habsburg duchy; its arms bear a white fire-breathing panther. Styria is now split between Austria and Slovenia.
Today part of: Austria
The yellow-red-white crown-land flag of one of the oldest duchies of the Holy Roman Empire, whose arms show three black lions on gold.
Today part of: Austria
A white-and-red bicolour for the Habsburg princely county on the Adriatic frontier, whose arms feature a gold lion. Its land is now split between Italy and Slovenia.
Today part of: Slovenia
Three gold crowns on light blue with a white border, the banner of the medieval English lordship before the gold-harp arms replaced it under Henry VIII.
Today part of: Ireland
The gold three-legged triskelion on red descends from the Norse-Gaelic Kingdom of Mann and the Isles, which once ruled the Irish Sea from the Isle of Man.
Today part of: United Kingdom
A white flag with a St George crest, flown by the Dadiani princes of western Georgia until the principality was absorbed by the Russian Empire.
Today part of: Georgia
A cross flag with two red and two blue quarters, the red marking Ottoman suzerainty over this autonomous Greek island principality, which united with Greece in 1912.
Today part of: Greece
The Grimaldi armorial banner of red-and-white lozenges, the dynasty's historic flag before Monaco adopted its plain red-over-white bicolour in 1881.
Today part of: Monaco
A tiny island kingdom off Sardinia ruled by the Bertoleoni family, sometimes called the smallest kingdom in the world. Its flag bears a gold star beneath a crown.
Today part of: Italy
A Polish-Lithuanian vassal duchy in modern Latvia that — astonishingly — founded colonies on Tobago in the Caribbean and an island in the Gambia in the 1650s.
Today part of: Latvia
The Cossack state of central Ukraine, founded by Bohdan Khmelnytsky's uprising, flew a crimson banner with a Cossack bearing a musket.
Today part of: Ukraine
A nominally independent buffer state the Bolsheviks set up across Siberia to avoid war with Japan; once the Japanese withdrew, it was absorbed into Soviet Russia.
Today part of: Russia
A short-lived Bolshevik republic in the Donbas industrial basin that tried to stay part of Soviet Russia rather than join Ukraine — dissolved within months.
Today part of: Ukraine
For a decade Abkhazia was a full Soviet republic with a hammer-and-sickle flag, before Stalin downgraded it to an autonomous republic within Georgia.
Today part of: Georgia
After independence Finland briefly elected a German prince as king and designed lion-bearing royal flags — but Germany's defeat in WWI ended the monarchy before he ever arrived.
Today part of: Finland
The tiny Mediterranean island Napoleon was given to rule during his first exile; he designed its white flag with a red bar and three gold bees before escaping to retake France.
Today part of: Italy
A short-lived Napoleonic client kingdom in Tuscany under the Bourbon-Parma dynasty, before Napoleon annexed it directly into France.
Today part of: Italy
A Venetian crusader state ruling the Cyclades from Naxos, under the Sanudo dynasty whose white banner bore a red cross and four black crosslets.
Today part of: Greece
An Austrian crown land carved from former Napoleonic territory along the Adriatic, covering parts of modern Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria.
Today part of: Slovenia
Warlord Essad Pasha Toptani's short-lived statelet around Durrës during Albania's chaotic birth, flying a red flag with a white star.
Today part of: Albania
A proposed homeland for the Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea coast, never realized; its black flag bore the eagle of the medieval Empire of Trebizond.
Today part of: Greece
One of the first secular Muslim-led republics in the world, flying the sky-blue Kök Bayraq with a golden Tatar tamga, before the Bolsheviks crushed it within months.
Today part of: Ukraine
A northern Italian duchy long ruled by the Farnese and later Bourbon-Parma dynasties, its yellow flag bearing a blue fleur-de-lis shield, absorbed into unified Italy.
Today part of: Italy
A Napoleonic state given to the emperor's sister Elisa Bonaparte, the only one of his siblings to rule in her own right.
Today part of: Italy
The white-over-green bicolor of the Wettin kings, who ruled from Dresden and joined the German Empire in 1871 while keeping their own monarch until 1918.
Today part of: Germany
Napoleon elevated the duchy of Württemberg to a kingdom in 1806; its black-over-red bicolor flew over Stuttgart until the monarchy fell at the end of World War I.
Today part of: Germany
A red-over-white bicolor for the Hesse-Darmstadt grand dukes, whose dynasty married into Europe's thrones — the last Tsarina of Russia was a Hessian princess.
Today part of: Germany
The Hesse-Kassel state, the only German principality to keep the title 'Elector' after the Holy Roman Empire dissolved, until Prussia annexed it in 1866.
Today part of: Germany
The blue-yellow-red tricolor shared by the two Mecklenburg grand duchies (Schwerin and Strelitz) on the Baltic coast, ruled by branches of the same Obotrite dynasty.
Today part of: Germany
A blue-red bicolor for the northwest German grand duchy whose ruling house also briefly held the thrones of Denmark, Greece, and Russia through dynastic marriage.
Today part of: Germany
The blue-over-yellow bicolor of the Welf dukes; its 'Black Duke' Frederick William raised a famous corps of black-clad hussars to fight Napoleon and died at Quatre Bras.
Today part of: Germany
An orange-blue bicolor for the duchy on the Rhine and Lahn; its ruling house gave the Netherlands its royal dynasty, the House of Orange-Nassau.
Today part of: Germany
The black-yellow-green flag of the Thuringian grand duchy whose Weimar court, under Goethe and Schiller, became the cultural heart of German classicism.
Today part of: Germany
A green-white bicolor for the small Thuringian duchy that became the 'stud farm of Europe' — its princes married into the British, Belgian, Portuguese, and Bulgarian thrones.
Today part of: Germany
The tiny Thuringian principalities famous for naming every male ruler Heinrich and numbering them in sequence — the elder line ran the count up to Heinrich LXVII.
Today part of: Germany
A blue-white bicolor for the two small Thuringian principalities of Rudolstadt and Sondershausen, ruled by one of Germany's oldest comital dynasties.
Today part of: Germany
A yellow-red bicolor for the small principality around Detmold, near the Teutoburg Forest where Germanic tribes annihilated three Roman legions in AD 9.
Today part of: Germany
One of the smallest German states, a blue-red-white tricolor principality of barely 50,000 people that nonetheless survived as a sovereign state until 1918.
Today part of: Germany
A green-white bicolor for the central German duchy, ancestral home of the Ascanian dynasty and birthplace of Catherine the Great of Russia.
Today part of: Germany
The white castle on red is the Hanseatic city-state's medieval emblem; its three towers and the cross-topped gate symbolize the free port's civic independence.
Today part of: Germany
The red-and-white 'Speckflagge' (bacon flag) of checkered stripes flew over the Hanseatic port-republic, one of the founding member states of the German Empire.
Today part of: Germany
The white-over-red bicolor of the 'Queen of the Hanseatic League', the city that led the medieval Baltic trade network before the Nazis stripped its statehood in 1937.
Today part of: Germany
The white-over-red city republic that hosted the German Confederation's parliament, until Prussia annexed it for siding against it in the 1866 war.
Today part of: Germany
The loose league of German states formed after Napoleon's defeat flew a black-red-gold war flag — the same liberal colors later adopted by unified Germany.
Today part of: Germany
A French-administered, semi-autonomous state after WWII, its flag a Nordic cross in French blue and red. A 1955 referendum returned the coal-rich Saar to West Germany.
Today part of: Germany
A Napoleonic client state on the Rhine, first ruled by Marshal Murat; its white flag bore a red lion before it was dissolved after Napoleon's defeat.
Today part of: Germany
The Valois dukes of Burgundy built one of the richest states in late-medieval Europe, rivaling the French crown, until Duke Charles the Bold fell at the Battle of Nancy in 1477.
Today part of: France
The independent Breton duchy on France's Atlantic peninsula; its modern black-and-white 'Gwenn ha du' flag recalls the duchy absorbed into France through royal marriage in 1532.
Today part of: France
A gold flag with a red diagonal band and three white eaglets; the duchy on the German frontier passed to France only after its last duke became Holy Roman Emperor.
Today part of: France
A papal enclave around Avignon ruled directly by the Popes for over five centuries — even surrounding the Avignon papacy — until France annexed it during the Revolution.
Today part of: France
The gold-and-red striped banner of the medieval county, ruled by the House of Barcelona and then Anjou, before it was bequeathed to the French crown in 1481.
Today part of: France
A Pyrenean county whose arms joined the gold-and-red pales of Foix with the cows of Béarn; its counts became kings of Navarre, and one, Henry, became King of France.
Today part of: France
One of medieval Europe's oldest kingdoms, in Spain's far northwest; its modern white flag with a blue diagonal recalls the realm home to the pilgrim shrine of Santiago de Compostela.
Today part of: Spain
The Basque Pyrenean kingdom whose red flag bears golden chains, said to commemorate Navarrese knights breaking the chains around the Almohad caliph's tent in 1212.
Today part of: Spain
The four red bars on gold — the Senyera — flew over a Mediterranean empire that ruled Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearics, Sardinia, Sicily, and at times Naples and Athens.
Today part of: Spain
The Senyera of four red bars on gold flew over the Catalan lands within the Crown of Aragon; Barcelona's fall in 1714 ended its self-government, an event still marked each September 11.
Today part of: Spain
The purple lion on white of the early medieval Christian kingdom that drove the Reconquista; its parliament of 1188 is often called the oldest in Europe.
Today part of: Spain
The blue flag with the gold Victory Cross marks the first Christian kingdom of the Reconquista, founded by Pelagius after his victory at Covadonga against the Moors.
Today part of: Spain
A short-lived independent Balearic kingdom carved out by James I of Aragon for a younger son, ruling the islands plus Roussillon and Montpellier on the mainland.
Today part of: Spain
A realm of the Crown of Aragon whose Senyera added a crowned blue stripe at the hoist; it was abolished by the Bourbons after backing the losing side in the War of Spanish Succession.
Today part of: Spain
The white-and-blue royal banner with the shield of five 'quinas' flew over the seafaring kingdom that launched the Age of Discovery, until the 1910 republican revolution.
Today part of: Portugal
Napoleon's Polish client state, a brief restoration of statehood after the Partitions; its white-and-crimson flag preceded the modern Polish flag by a century.
Today part of: Poland
A tiny independent city-republic created at the Congress of Vienna, the last fragment of sovereign Poland, until Austria annexed it after a failed 1846 uprising.
Today part of: Poland
The Soviet-aligned communist state flew the same white-and-red bicolor as the republic before and after it, the eagle on its arms shorn of its royal crown until 1989.
Today part of: Poland
A red flag with a lower azure band and a gold hammer, sickle and star, flown by Soviet Ukraine — which, unusually, held its own seat at the United Nations.
Today part of: Ukraine
Red over a green band with a white folk-ornament stripe at the hoist; modern Belarus readopted a near-identical design in 1995, dropping only the hammer and sickle.
Today part of: Belarus
A red flag with white and green lower bands, flown over Soviet Lithuania until the republic became the first to declare independence from the USSR in 1990.
Today part of: Lithuania
A red flag whose lower edge bore stylized white waves of the Baltic Sea beneath the hammer, sickle and star, used until Latvia restored its independence.
Today part of: Latvia
A red flag with a wavy blue-and-white Baltic band at the base, the Soviet flag of Estonia, replaced when the blue-black-white national tricolor was restored in 1990.
Today part of: Estonia
A red flag with a central green stripe and the hammer, sickle and star, flown by Soviet Moldova before the country adopted a Romanian-style tricolor in 1990.
Today part of: Moldova
The largest Soviet republic flew a red flag with a thin blue stripe down the hoist; the RSFSR was the core of the USSR and became the Russian Federation in 1991.
Today part of: Russia
A Tatar successor state of the Golden Horde on the Volga, conquered by Ivan the Terrible in 1552 — a turning point in Russia's eastward expansion.
Today part of: Russia
A British protectorate over the Ionian Islands, flying the Lion of St Mark on a Union-Jack-cantoned flag, until the islands were ceded to Greece in 1864.
Today part of: Greece
The white-red-white flag of the short-lived republic declared during WWI; suppressed by the Bolsheviks, it returned as independent Belarus's flag from 1991 to 1995.
Today part of: Belarus
The red banner with the white Vytis — an armored knight on a charging horse — flew over a realm that at its height stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Today part of: Lithuania
A blue flag with the golden Giray-dynasty tamga; the last remnant of the Golden Horde, it dominated the northern Black Sea steppe until Catherine the Great annexed it.
Today part of: Ukraine
The Turco-Mongol khanate beyond the Urals that gave Siberia its name; its conquest by the Cossack Yermak opened Russia's vast eastward expansion across Asia.
Today part of: Russia
A Tatar successor state of the Golden Horde on the Volga; Ivan the Terrible's bloody siege and capture of Kazan in 1552 is commemorated by Moscow's St Basil's Cathedral.
Today part of: Russia
A small Tatar khanate guarding the Volga delta and the Caspian trade, the last of the Golden Horde's successors, annexed by Ivan the Terrible four years after Kazan.
Today part of: Russia
The Mongol khanate that held the Russian principalities under the 'Tatar Yoke' for over two centuries; this white banner with a crescent appears on a 1339 Genoese map.
Today part of: Russia
A short-lived Tatar-Bashkir republic on the Volga proclaimed amid the Russian Revolution, crushed by the Bolsheviks within weeks of its declaration.
Today part of: Russia
An attempt by Ukrainian settlers in the Russian Far East to form an autonomous state around the Amur and Pacific coast, suppressed by the Bolsheviks.
Today part of: Russia
Béla Kun's plain red communist state, the second Soviet republic in the world after Russia, which lasted just 133 days before Romanian troops toppled it.
Today part of: Hungary
The communist 'Rákosi coat of arms' on the tricolor was so hated that 1956 revolutionaries cut it out, leaving a hole-in-the-flag that became the uprising's emblem.
Today part of: Hungary
A largely autonomous Ottoman vassal principality and Protestant stronghold; its blue-and-gold flag joined the symbols of its Hungarian, Székely, and Saxon 'nations'.
Today part of: Romania
The white-over-red bicolor of the Czech lands ruled from Prague; its kings were prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire, and one, Charles IV, became Emperor himself.
Today part of: Czech Republic
The eastern Czech land, a margraviate within the Bohemian crown; its yellow-and-red checkered eagle gives the modern Moravian flag its distinctive look.
Today part of: Czech Republic
A clerical-nationalist client state of Nazi Germany under Jozef Tiso, the first time Slovakia existed as a separate state; it flew a plain white-blue-red tricolor.
Today part of: Slovakia
The red-blue-white tricolor with the royal arms flew over the independent Serbian kingdom whose alliances and crisis with Austria-Hungary helped ignite World War I.
Today part of: Serbia
An autonomous principality that won self-rule from the Ottomans under the rival Obrenović and Karađorđević dynasties before being raised to a kingdom in 1882.
Today part of: Serbia
The red flag bearing the crowned cypher of King Nikola I, ruler of the small Balkan mountain kingdom that merged into Yugoslavia after World War I.
Today part of: Montenegro
The white-green-red tricolor of the 'Third Bulgarian State', a kingdom under the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha tsars, abolished by referendum in favor of a communist republic in 1946.
Today part of: Bulgaria
The blue-yellow-red tricolor of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen kings, who doubled the country's size after World War I before the communists forced King Michael to abdicate.
Today part of: Romania
A Danubian principality long under Ottoman suzerainty, ruled by voivodes including Vlad the Impaler; it united with Moldavia in 1859 to form modern Romania.
Today part of: Romania
The eastern Romanian principality of Stephen the Great, who held off the Ottomans for decades; its union with Wallachia created the United Principalities of Romania.
Today part of: Romania
The last independent medieval Serbian state, a despotate that briefly flourished at Smederevo before the Ottomans conquered it, ending Serbian statehood for centuries.
Today part of: Serbia
A blue-and-yellow flag for the Habsburg crown land along the Adriatic coast, governed from Zadar, whose territory is now part of Croatia.
Today part of: Croatia
An autonomous Ottoman province created by the Congress of Berlin, with a white flag and green canton; it unilaterally united with Bulgaria after a bloodless 1885 coup.
Today part of: Bulgaria
The Axis puppet state run by the fascist Ustaše, responsible for atrocities against Serbs, Jews, and Roma; its flag added the Ustaše's 'U' badge to the Croatian checkerboard.
Today part of: Croatia
The brief independent republic born from the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires; its red-blue-orange tricolor was readopted when Armenia regained independence in 1991.
Today part of: Armenia
The first secular democratic republic in the Muslim world, which gave women the vote before many Western states; its blue-red-green flag flies over independent Azerbaijan again today.
Today part of: Azerbaijan
A red flag with a sunburst-and-hammer roundel in a blue canton; Soviet Georgia was the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, in the town of Gori.
Today part of: Georgia
A red flag with a horizontal blue stripe and the hammer, sickle and star, flown over Soviet Armenia until the national tricolor was restored in 1990.
Today part of: Armenia
For 14 years Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were fused into a single Soviet republic — one of the four founding members of the USSR — before Stalin split them apart.
Today part of: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan
A Menshevik-led social-democratic republic with a wine-red flag, conquered by the Red Army in 1921; its flag flew again over independent Georgia from 1990 to 2004.
Today part of: Georgia
The medieval Christian kingdom that reached its 'Golden Age' under Queen Tamar, ruling much of the Caucasus before Mongol invasions fractured it into rival realms.
Today part of: Georgia
A red-and-yellow Nordic-cross flag for the southern provinces that were Danish for centuries before Sweden conquered them in 1658 — a frontier fought over for generations.
Today part of: Sweden
The red St George's Cross on white became England's flag in the late Middle Ages; the kingdom merged with Scotland in 1707 to form Great Britain.
Today part of: United Kingdom
The white Saltire of St Andrew on blue, one of the oldest national flags in the world, flew over independent Scotland until the union with England in 1707.
Today part of: United Kingdom
The first Union Flag, combining the crosses of St George and St Andrew, flew over the merged kingdom until Ireland's 1801 union added St Patrick's saltire to make the modern flag.
Today part of: United Kingdom
England's brief republic after the execution of Charles I, ruled by Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector; its flag combined the crosses of England, Scotland, and Ireland with his arms.
Today part of: United Kingdom
The red saltire of St Patrick on white represented the kingdom under the English (later British) crown; it survives as the Irish element of the modern Union Flag.
Today part of: Ireland
The red-white-blue 'Statenvlag' of the Seven United Provinces, a merchant republic that became a 17th-century global trading and naval superpower in its Golden Age.
Today part of: Netherlands
A short-lived confederation born of the Brabant Revolution against Austrian rule; its black-yellow-red colors were the direct forerunner of the modern Belgian flag.
Today part of: Belgium
An independent Calvinist city-republic — the 'Protestant Rome' — until France annexed it; it later joined the Swiss Confederation as a canton in 1815.
Today part of: Switzerland
The loose alliance of cantons that grew from the legendary 1291 oath; the white cross on red it fought under at Morgarten and Sempach became the modern Swiss flag.
Today part of: Switzerland
A League of Nations territory around the Baltic port of Klaipėda, seized by Lithuania in 1923; Nazi Germany forced its cession in 1939, one of the last crises before WWII.
Today part of: Lithuania