Could not read JSON: Can not deserialize instance of hello.Country[] out of START_OBJECT token

You need to do the following:

public class CountryInfoResponse {

   @JsonProperty("geonames")
   private List<Country> countries; 

   //getter - setter
}

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
List<Country> countries = restTemplate.getForObject("http://api.geonames.org/countryInfoJSON?username=volodiaL",CountryInfoResponse.class).getCountries();

It would be great if you could use some kind of annotation to allow you to skip levels, but it’s not yet possible (see this and this)