Five inhabited places with somebody else's border on every side, reached only by a leased corridor, a neutral road, or the goodwill of the nation that rings them.
Barely 680 metres of Swiss ground separates it from the rest of Germany. It sits inside the Swiss customs area rather than the EU's, keeps both a German and a Swiss postal code, and German police travelling there must use designated routes and perform no official act while crossing Switzerland.
The state-owned casino opened in 1917 to loosen the tongues of foreign diplomats for Italian wartime intelligence, shut in 1919, and reopened in 1933 — after which its takings alone ran the comune, which levied no local taxes. It was declared bankrupt on 27 July 2018; on 1 January 2020 the town finally joined the EU customs territory it had always sat outside, and the tables reopened in January 2022.
Its Esteve pharmacy was already trading in 1415 and is among the oldest in Europe, its cobalt-blue albarello jars now the heart of the municipal museum. The 1.6 km link to Spain was a customs-free 'neutral road' until Schengen arrived in 1995.
Its 93 km² lie entirely inside the United Arab Emirates — and inside it lies Nahwa, a village belonging to the Emirate of Sharjah, making this one of the world's very few counter-enclaves. No fence or checkpoint marks either boundary.
Dahagram–Angarpota is the last surviving India–Bangladesh enclave. India leases the 178-by-85-metre Tin Bigha Corridor to Bangladesh in perpetuity — use of the ground, but not sovereignty over it — so residents can reach home; it opened in 1992 for daylight hours only, and since 19 October 2011 it has stayed open day and night bar the single hour India's border force takes over its flag ceremony.
Think you'd have found them? Play today's expedition, or replay this one from the archive.