Old towns, islands, museums and city breaks, from Lisbon to Baku
Pena Palace in Sintra is usually photographed from outside, where its red and yellow walls rise above the wooded hills. Step into the small cloister and the scale changes. The walls close around a courtyard, the galleries bring people within speaking distance of one another, and…
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…
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…
