Introduction: Aneurysm disease occurs throughout the arterial tree, abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and popliteal artery aneurysm (PAA) being the most frequent ones. The pathology is best examined, yet little understood, for AAA. Aneurysm disease has distinct features like angiogenesis and phenotype switch of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC). However, little is known about these characteristics in other than AAA. Material and Methods: From a surgical biobank we compared 42 AAA, 15 PAA, 3 ascending aortic, 5 iliac, 3 femoral, 2 brachial, 1 visceral and 1 carotid artery aneurysm on morphologic, protein and mRNA-expression levels. Two multi-stage mouse models of aneurysm disease were applied to test response to aneurysm induction at different arterial locations. Results: AAAs show a varying histomorphologic appearance, not seen in PAA, which, in turn, has a high proliferation rate in the aneurysm sac, making other than surgical interventions appealing. All entities show VSMC phenotype switch, angiogenesis, matrix remodeling and T-cell/macrophage inflammation. AAA and PAA have similar alterations in TGFß-signaling. To further investigate these conditions in mouse models, we applied the PPE procedure to a juxtarenal aorta and the EPA model to a thoracic, abdominal and femoral location. Conclusion: Despite different arterial morphogenesis, advanced aneurysm disease from human intraoperative specimen shows similar characteristics of end-stage disease.