Topic summary
Elbe river
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Elbe.
The Elbe river basin, comprising the Elbe and its tributaries, has a catchment area of 148,268 square kilometres (57,247 sq mi), the twelfth-largest in Europe. The basin spans four countries; however, it lies almost entirely within two of them: Germany (65.5%) and the Czech Republic (33.7%), covering about two-thirds of the basin's area. On its southeastern edge, the Elbe River Basin also comprises small parts of Austria (0.6%) and Poland (0.2%). The Elbe catchment area is inhabited by 24.4 million people; its biggest cities are Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Dresden and Leipzig.