Old towns, islands, museums and city breaks, from Lisbon to Baku
One well-chosen walk can give a city break a shape without filling every hour. Pick a route that joins different kinds of space, allows a few stops and leaves a sensible way home. You can then place booked visits around it rather than using your entire stay to shuttle between…
A waterfront gives a newcomer something a dense street map often cannot: a long, readable line. You can see the direction of the river or coast…
Lyon makes more sense from the water. On foot, the city arrives in fragments: an old-town alley, a bridge, a steep glimpse of Fourvière, a modern…
Taormina has a remarkable talent for making an ordinary summer afternoon feel like a theatrical performance. There is no need for a festival, a…
The Cathedral of Syracuse, standing in Piazza Duomo on the island of Ortigia, is one of those buildings that makes you wonder whether architecture…
Vienna has a remarkable talent for making history feel physically enormous. Walk into Maria-Theresien-Platz, the broad square between the city's two…
Ask anyone in Baku for the national dish and you'll get an argument: plov, says one; dolma, says the next. Dolma has the paperwork. In 2017 UNESCO…
The Torre de Belém is the most photographed building in Lisbon and, for most of a year, you couldn't go inside it. The tower closed for a restoration…
You see the Big Buddha before you land. The statue sits on a small islet on the northeast coast of Koh Samui, a few kilometres from the airport, and…
