Enclaves, Exclaves & Border Oddities

Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog

Two towns, two countries, one village: the world's most intricate patchwork of Belgian and Dutch enclaves

Bir Tawil

A wedge of desert between Egypt and Sudan that neither country claims

Büsingen am Hochrhein

A German village surrounded by Switzerland that uses Swiss francs and Swiss customs

Cabinda

Angola's oil-rich Atlantic exclave, separated from the rest of the country by a strip of Congolese coast

Campione d'Italia

An Italian lakeside town inside Switzerland, famous for its casino

Gibraltar International Airport

The runway on a disputed isthmus that a city street once crossed, now a Schengen entry point under the 2026 UK–EU treaty

Hans Island

The Arctic rock that Canada and Denmark contested with flags and liquor, then split in 2022

Kaliningrad Oblast

Russia's Baltic exclave between Poland and Lithuania, the former German Königsberg

Kazungula (the near-quadripoint)

Where Botswana and Zambia touch for about 150 meters on the Zambezi, a stone's throw from Namibia and Zimbabwe

Llívia

A Spanish town entirely surrounded by France, left behind by the wording of a 17th-century treaty

Märket

A bare Baltic skerry split between Sweden and Finland by a zig-zag border drawn around a lighthouse

Musandam

Oman's mountainous exclave at the tip of the Strait of Hormuz, with the Madha and Nahwa enclave-within-an-enclave

Nakhchivan

Azerbaijan's landlocked exclave between Armenia, Iran and Turkey

Oecusse

Timor-Leste's coastal exclave inside Indonesian West Timor, birthplace of Portuguese Timor

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera

A fortified Spanish rock off Morocco's Rif coast, tied to Africa by a sandbar and an 85-meter border

Pheasant Island

A tiny river island ruled by France and Spain in turn, changing hands every six months

Point Roberts

A corner of Washington State that can be reached by land only through Canada

The Diomede Islands

Two islands in the Bering Strait, Russian and American, 3.8 km apart and nearly a day apart in time

The India–Bangladesh Enclaves

The 162 Cooch Behar enclaves, including the world's only third-order enclave, exchanged in 2015

The Korean Demilitarized Zone

The 4-kilometer-wide strip across the Korean Peninsula that has divided North and South since the 1953 armistice

The Northwest Angle

The chimney on the map of Minnesota, the only part of the lower 48 states north of the 49th parallel

The UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus (Green Line)

The UN-patrolled strip that has divided Cyprus and its capital, Nicosia, since 1974