Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 15 sculpted stations of the cross on the Sacred Mountain of Domodossola provide a fascinating experience, even in the rain – or, perhaps, particularly so One thing you have to say for the Alps, they don’t do much by halves there. Europe’s highest mountain range has proper…
A multi-site exhibition in Nice celebrates the past and the present of France’s second most famous and most attractive boulevard The past is a foreign country, the novel “The Go Between” famously begins, and although we all know that “they do things differently there”, we are often insufficiently aware of the size of the gap…
As seen on an iconic, world-famous painting – and by Kaiser Bill’s mother Ruegen is Germany’s largest island and one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. Unsurprisingly, considering the German love for hiking, Ruegen also has a dense network of hiking paths, all centred on the 140 km long Hauptwanderweg – the “main hiking path”…
When Kosice became European Capital of Culture in 2013, the municipal authorities took a bold decision: resisting the temptation of putting all the money into their historic town centre, they allocated a significant proportion of the budget to the city’s modern, residential areas. Rather than hiding these quarters away – in terms of surface as…
In today’s world, what is a traditional building? Here is something about Eastern and Central Europe (the countries that used to lie behind the former Iron Curtain) that many of you may not know: most of the locals that you meet in the streets are no more intimate than you with their cities’ fantastic urban…
Biot is that rare thing of a Riviera hilltop town: as unassuming, authentic and unspoilt as you can expect any town in this part of the world to be The stretch between Antibes and Nice Airport is, without a doubt, the ugliest section of the Cote d’Azur: on the one side of the road and…
Picasso spent the last 12 years of his life here, but there are many other reasons to visit this hilltop village north of Cannes. If the French Riviera is not exclusively famous for being a playground of people with more money than sense – from 19th century Russian aristocrats via eccentric East Coast heiresses during…
Today, we shall make one last visit to the South West Coast Path, albeit one with a difference. On this stretch of the trail, you will (probably) meet more people than on all of the other stages together and (certainly) see more concrete, too, but what this part of the path may lack in scenic…
… whether you are interested in the history of landscaping or not … parks and public gardens reflect the times in which they were created no less than buildings do, because tastes in landscaping vary as much as architectural ones. In theory, it may be possible to adapt a landscaped garden to a newly emerging…
The Piemontese hills may provide a picturesque backdrop, but it is in the flat countryside where the city’s lifeblood flows To the casual observer, it may seem that the countryside in and around Turin is mainly Alpine in nature. The Alps indeed seem to be everywhere … … but while they undoubtedly attract the eye,…