A tripoint, trijunction[1], or triple point (also, if inexactly, known as a tri-border area), is a geographical point at which the borders of three countries or subnational entities meet.
There are currently 157 international tripoints (i.e., tricountry points) by some accounts, and as many as 176 (or even 207) by others, but in any case these counts include a few condominial and buffered trijunctions that are technically tri lines or tri areas rather than simply tripoints.[2] Nearly half of these usually exact but sometimes slightly indefinite places are situated not on dry land but in rivers or lakes or seas. When on dry land, the exact tripoints are usually demarcated by the center or vertex of special (but highly various) markers or pillars. Often and increasingly such places are also the sites of sometimes extensive monumental memorials and expositions.
Usually, the more neighbours a country has, the more international tripoints that country has. China with 16 tripoints and Russia with 11 to 14 lead the list of states by number of tripoints. Within Europe, landlocked Austria has nine tripoints, among them two with Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Island countries such as the UK or Japan have no tricountry points (some, like Bahrain and Singapore, have tripoints in the territorial waters), nor have states with only one neighbour state, like Portugal or Denmark. Likewise the United States with two neighbour states has no tricountry points; it has a number of tristate points as well as one point where four states meet.
Border junctions (or "multiple points" or "multipoints" as they are also sometimes called) are most typically threefold. (Hence their commonest names "tripoint," "trijunction," "triple point," "triune point" "trifinium," "triplex confinium" etc.) But like clover they are also found in a much less common alternative fourfold arrangement, which accordingly is known as a quadripoint, "quadruple point," etc. (And there are even a handful of still more multiple combinations so rare that they are not normally acknowledged or known by any names, but may nevertheless be informally grouped into a small handful of fivefold points, as well as probably unique examples of a sixfold, sevenfold, and eightfold point respectively. No more than eight borders are known to meet at a single multipoint anywhere on earth. But various and in some cases conflicting territorial claims of six countries have historically converged and by some accounts still do converge at the south pole in a point of elevenfold complexity.)
It is often illegal to pass a national border outside border controls, and therefore illegal to walk around many tripoint markers. According to the Schengen rules, it is illegal to pass the outside border of the Schengen area except at border controls.[3] But it is legal to pass the border between two Schengen countries at any place. Countries with good relations will generally have the checkpoints a bit off the technical border line to allow tourists to walk around border marker monuments without getting in the way of immigration authorities.
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Well known international tripoints include:
For a full list, see list of tripoints.