Journal
The eight cities we love, and why we started here.
Marta Ionescu · 22. srpna 2026 · 3 min read
Every rental platform tells you it covers the continent. The interesting question is which cities it built for first, and why.
We opened with eight — Barcelona, Lisbon, Berlin, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Vienna — not because they're the biggest, but because they're the cities where the shape of a home changes when you cross the street.
Barcelona
An Eixample apartment breathes differently from a Gràcia one. The Eixample gives you a balcony, tall windows, and a courtyard so quiet you can hear the neighbour's radio. Gràcia gives you a two-minute walk to a plaça where someone is always tuning a guitar. We spent three weeks last spring listing across both, and the sentence we heard most from tenants was, "I didn't know they were the same city."
Lisbon
You choose Lisbon by the tiles. Estrela is calm and green. Alfama is laundry lines and a tram that runs three metres from your kitchen window. Chiado has been through five renovations and still won't sit still. The rentals we like most in Lisbon have small footprints and enormous ceilings — a lesson the city has been teaching for four hundred years.
Berlin
Altbau is a whole promise: parquet, plaster mouldings, a stove tucked into a corner that once burnt coal. Prenzlauer Berg has kept the mould- ings and swapped the stove for an induction hob. Kreuzberg kept the stove. Mitte kept nothing, and doesn't apologize. Each neighbourhood is a different negotiation between the century you're renting from and the one you actually live in.
Paris
Chevron parquet. Zinc roofs. A radiator that clunks. Le Marais and the 11ᵉ are the two arrondissements our tenants message us about after they move in — Le Marais for the way the light falls at 4pm on a Saturday, the 11ᵉ for the way the boulangerie next door starts up at 5am. A Parisian apartment is not so much rented as inherited for a year.
Milan
Milan is the city that most repays a small budget. The Navigli lofts punch above their price because they were designed to be lived in before they were designed to be photographed. Isola trades a hundred euros of rent for a hundred euros of daylight. Brera charges for proximity to a museum you were going to visit anyway.
Amsterdam
The canal houses are exactly what you think, and they still surprise you. Jordaan is quieter than the internet suggests. De Pijp is louder, and the bike traffic at 8am on a Wednesday moves like weather. What Amsterdam does that no other European capital does is treat cycling as architecture — apartments come with a bike hook the same way Parisian ones come with a shoe rack.
Copenhagen
Nørrebro's kitchens are lit from the north. Vesterbro is what people mean when they say "cosy" without saying "small." Nyhavn is a postcard you can rent, briefly, at postcard prices. If Berlin is a negotiation, Copenhagen is a design brief that everyone has agreed to.
Vienna
Vienna makes a room feel like a room. The Innere Stadt is stately. Neubau is where the city goes to argue with itself. Wieden is Naschmarkt's kitchen. The apartments carry a specific quiet — walls thick enough that a piano next door sounds like a memory.
We opened here because these eight cities each teach a different lesson about what a good year in a European city looks like. The next four land in October — Madrid, Munich, Rotterdam, Prague. If any of them sound like where you want to spend a year, tell us where and we'll write you when the first listings go live.