The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg: A Different Approach to One of the World’s Largest Collections The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is the second-largest art museum in the world by collection size, and one of the most architecturally overwhelming. Unlike the Louvre, where the collection grew into a building that had existed for other purposes, the Hermitage’s core building...

The Empire State Building: What You’re Actually Looking At The Empire State Building was completed in 1931, took 410 days to build, and held the title of world’s tallest building for 41 years until the World Trade Center surpassed it in 1972. It stands 443 metres to the roof (or 443 metres to the tip of the antenna, depending on measurement convention) at the intersection of Fifth...

Great Smoky Mountains: The Most Visited National Park in the US and How to Actually Enjoy It The Great Smoky Mountains National Park straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee border and receives around 13 million visitors per year, more than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined. The park is free to enter (no fee, no reservation required for day visits), which explains much of the volume. The downside:...

Oia, Santorini: The Sunset and What Is Actually Worth Your Time Oia (pronounced EE-ah, not OY-ah) is at the northern tip of Santorini, one of the most photographed villages in the Mediterranean, and in summer one of the most crowded. The combination of white cubic architecture on the caldera rim, blue-domed churches, and the sunset view over the Aegean drives enormous tourist volumes from June...

The Pyramids of Giza: What to Expect, What to Skip, and How to Get the Most Out of the Visit The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest man-made structure on earth for nearly 4,000 years, from its completion around 2560 BCE until the completion of Lincoln Cathedral in England in 1311. Standing at the base and tilting your head back to see where the 146-metre (original height) surface disappears...

Torres del Paine: Planning the Trip That Actually Works Torres del Paine is in Chilean Patagonia, about 2,500 kilometres south of Santiago and 150 kilometres from Puerto Natales, the nearest town of any size. The park contains three granite towers rising 2,800 metres above sea level, a glacier the size of Los Angeles, and some of the most consistently dramatic mountain scenery on earth. It is...

Cloud Gate and Millennium Park: The 20 Best Minutes and the 20 Best Hours in Chicago Cloud Gate, the polished stainless steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor in Millennium Park, was unveiled in 2006 and immediately became the defining visual of contemporary Chicago. It reflects the lakefront, the skyline, and every person who stands under it in a continuous distorted panorama. It is open 24 hours, free...

Valencia: The City That Invented Paella and Still Does It Best Valencia is Spain’s third-largest city, on the Mediterranean coast 350 kilometres south of Barcelona, and it has developed a tourist profile that is more modest than its cultural and culinary importance warrants. The city that invented paella (the original version, made with rabbit and snails, not the seafood version that tourist...

Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge Memorial Sites: Visiting With the Seriousness They Require The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng (S-21) are not attractions in the usual sense. They are preserved sites of crimes against humanity, and visiting them requires a different mental preparation from a temple or a food market. That said, they are among the most important places to visit in Southeast Asia...

Yakushima: Japan’s Ancient Forest Island Yakushima is a roughly circular island of 504 square kilometres off the southern tip of Kyushu, covered in temperate rainforest that receives up to 10 metres of rain per year in the interior mountain zones. It received UNESCO World Heritage status in 1993 specifically for its ancient cedar forest, which contains trees that are thousands of years old....

Rio Carnival: What Actually Happens and How to Be There For It Rio Carnival falls in February or early March (the exact dates shift with the Catholic calendar, always ending on Ash Wednesday), and it is several simultaneous events happening at different scales, in different neighbourhoods, with different crowds and different price points. The mistake most first-time visitors make is assuming it is...

The Grand Bazaar, Istanbul: How to Visit It Without Being Exhausted by It The Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı) is one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world, first established in 1455, two years after Mehmed II conquered Constantinople. It currently covers 30,700 square metres, contains over 4,000 shops across 61 streets, and receives somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors on...

Borobudur: The World’s Largest Buddhist Monument and How to See It Properly Borobudur was built in central Java between approximately 780 and 830 CE during the Sailendra dynasty. At the time of its construction it was already one of the largest religious structures ever built, and it remains the world’s largest Buddhist monument. The temple sat abandoned and covered in volcanic ash for...

Lavena Coastal Walk, Taveuni, Fiji: One of the Pacific’s Best Half-Day Hikes The Lavena Coastal Walk is on Taveuni, the third-largest island in Fiji, sometimes called “the Garden Island” for its rainforest coverage and waterfall density. The walk itself is around 8 kilometres return, following the eastern coastline through forest and beach before reaching the Wainibau Falls at...

Red Square, Moscow: What the Name Means and What You’re Actually Looking At The name “Red Square” does not derive from communism or from the red brick walls of the Kremlin. It comes from the old Russian word “krasnaya,” which historically meant both “red” and “beautiful.” The square was called Beautiful Square long before the Soviet period. The...

The Rijksmuseum: How to Actually Enjoy It Without the Crowds The Rijksmuseum is one of the best art museums in Europe and also, on certain summer Saturday afternoons, one of the most oppressively crowded. The building is large enough to absorb a lot of visitors, but the Gallery of Honour, which contains The Night Watch, becomes genuinely difficult to appreciate when it is shoulder-to-shoulder with...

The Minaret of Jam: Afghanistan’s Most Isolated UNESCO Site The Minaret of Jam stands 65 metres tall in a narrow valley in the Ghor province of central Afghanistan, at the confluence of the Hari Rud and Jam Rud rivers. It was built in the late 12th century, probably during the reign of Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad Ghori of the Ghurid dynasty, and is decorated with interlaced geometric and...

Petra: What to See, How Long to Spend, and Where Most Visitors Go Wrong Petra is in southern Jordan, about 240 kilometres south of Amman and 130 kilometres north of Aqaba. It was the capital of the Nabataean kingdom from roughly the 4th century BCE to the 1st century CE, and the Nabataeans carved hundreds of tombs, temples, and civic buildings directly into the rose-red sandstone mountains. The...

Wembley Stadium: Visiting England’s National Ground The current Wembley Stadium opened in 2011, replacing the original 1923 stadium that stood on the same site. The new building holds 90,000 seated spectators and is topped by a distinctive arch that is 133 metres at its highest point, visible from much of northwest London. It serves as the home ground for the England national football and...

Mexico City: The Most Underestimated Capital in the Americas Mexico City is the most populous city in North America at around 22 million people in the greater metro area, and it is consistently underestimated by travellers who associate Mexico primarily with beach resorts. The altitude (2,240 metres), the sheer scale, the traffic, and the food reputation that has only recently reached global...

Lima: South America’s Best Food City and Why Most Visitors Only Scratch the Surface Lima is the capital of Peru, a city of 11 million people on the Pacific coast, and since roughly 2013 it has held a serious claim to being the best restaurant city in South America. The Peruvian culinary tradition combines Andean ingredients, Japanese immigrant technique (Nikkei cuisine), Chinese immigrant...

The Winter Palace and Hermitage, St Petersburg: How to See It Without Losing Your Mind The Winter Palace is the building; the State Hermitage Museum is the institution that occupies it. The confusion between the two is common, and the distinction matters practically because the Hermitage also occupies five additional buildings: the Small Hermitage, the Old Hermitage, the New Hermitage, the...

Majorelle Gardens: The Best Hour You Will Spend in Marrakech The Majorelle Gardens take about 45 minutes to an hour to see properly. They are small (less than 1 hectare), concentrated, and if you arrive between 9am and 11am or after 4pm when the midday tour buses have cleared, genuinely tranquil. At midday in peak season, the queue at the entrance stretches back and the narrow paths inside feel...

New Orleans: How to Visit the City Most Tourists Get Slightly Wrong New Orleans is one of the genuinely singular American cities, with a food culture, music tradition, and architectural character that has no close parallel anywhere in the United States. It is also a city with a strong tourist infrastructure designed to channel visitors toward a relatively small slice of the full experience. The...

Festung Hohensalzburg: The Fortress That Never Fell Hohensalzburg is one of the largest and best-preserved medieval fortresses in Europe, and almost uniquely among large Central European castles, it was never conquered by siege. The fortress was begun in 1077 by Archbishop Gebhard von Helffenstein during the Investiture Controversy between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. Subsequent...

The Banaue Rice Terraces: 2,000 Years of Agricultural Engineering The Ifugao rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most extraordinary examples of agricultural engineering anywhere in the world. The Ifugao people have been carving terraces into the steep mountain slopes of northern Luzon for approximately 2,000 years, using knowledge of local...

The Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho: What to Do, Where to Sleep, and What to Skip If you have been to Yosemite or Glacier and want somewhere with the same scale of scenery but a fraction of the crowds, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho is your answer. The range has 42 peaks above 10,000 feet, more than 300 alpine lakes, and access roads that most American tourists simply have not...

The Cuillin Hills, Skye: The Sharpest Mountains in Britain The Black Cuillin on the Isle of Skye are the only mountains in Britain that require technical rock climbing skills to reach all of their summits. The main ridge runs 12 kilometres and connects 11 Munros (peaks above 3,000 feet); the traverse of the complete ridge in a single push is one of the most serious mountaineering objectives in the...

Saltaire: The Victorian Millionaire’s Utopia That Actually Worked Saltaire is a planned industrial village in West Yorkshire built between 1851 and 1876 by the textile magnate Sir Titus Salt. It received UNESCO World Heritage status in 2001 and sits about four miles north of Bradford city centre, easily reached from Leeds or Bradford by train (Saltaire station is on the line between both...

Kaikoura: Sperm Whales Two Kilometres Off the Coast Kaikoura sits on the northeast coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where the Kaikoura Canyon drops to 1,000 metres depth just 2 kilometres offshore. This underwater geography creates upwellings that concentrate marine life: sperm whales feed here year-round, along with dusky dolphins, New Zealand fur seals, various seabird species, and...

New Orleans French Quarter: The Real Guide The French Quarter (Vieux Carré) is where New Orleans started in 1718 and it is the most visited neighbourhood in the American South. The grid of streets between the Mississippi River and North Rampart Street contains some of the finest examples of Creole and Spanish colonial architecture in North America, along with one of the most concentrated food and...

Lake Wanaka: The Quieter Alternative to Queenstown That Most Visitors Prefer After a Day Wanaka is 70 kilometres from Queenstown on the other side of the Crown Range, and the two towns are often compared as if they were competitors. The comparison is unfair to both. Queenstown is a large resort town organised around adventure tourism and nightlife; Wanaka is smaller, quieter, and organised around...

Kolmanskop: The Diamond Boom Town the Desert is Reclaiming Kolmanskop is 10 kilometres inland from Lüderitz on Namibia’s Atlantic coast, and it exists in the specific form it does because someone found a diamond in the sand in 1908. The worker, Zacharias Lewala, showed the stone to his German supervisor Johannes Stauch, who reported the find to the German colonial authorities. Within two...

Edinburgh: A Practical Guide to Scotland’s Capital Edinburgh is a compact city of about half a million people built on volcanic rock and glacial valleys, with a medieval spine (the Royal Mile), a Georgian grid to the north (the New Town), and a 251-metre extinct volcano rising from a public park in the east. It punches well above its size on history, food, and architecture, and is genuinely...

Madidi National Park: The Most Biodiverse Place on Earth Madidi National Park in northwestern Bolivia is, by several biodiversity metrics, the most species-rich protected area anywhere on the planet. A 2016 study found that the park contains 11 percent of all bird species on earth (1,088 species), more mammal species than any other single protected area, and botanical diversity that scientists are...

Nyungwe Forest: Rwanda’s Most Biodiverse and Undervisited National Park Nyungwe Forest National Park covers 1,019 square kilometres in southwest Rwanda, making it one of the largest montane rainforest reserves in Africa. It is separated from Volcanoes National Park (the mountain gorilla destination in the northwest) by the whole length of Rwanda, which means visitors to Nyungwe are making a...

The Big Island: Hawaii’s Youngest, Strangest, and Most Underrated Island The Big Island (officially Hawaii Island) is the youngest of the main Hawaiian Islands and the largest at roughly 10,000 square kilometres, larger than all other Hawaiian islands combined. It is also geologically the most active: Kilauea volcano on the island’s southeastern flank has been erupting with minimal...

The D-Day Beaches and American Cemetery: How to Visit Properly On June 6, 1944, Allied forces landed on five beaches along 80 kilometres of the Normandy coast. The American landings at Omaha and Utah beaches, the British at Gold and Sword, and the Canadian at Juno beach established a bridgehead that ultimately led to the liberation of Western Europe. The physical landscape of that operation is...

Grand Teton National Park: Wyoming’s Best-Kept Open Secret Grand Teton sits immediately south of Yellowstone, a geographical fact that means most visitors treat it as a secondary stop or a drive-through on their way north. This is a mistake. The Teton Range, which rises abruptly 7,000 feet above the flat floor of Jackson Hole without any foothills to ease the transition, is one of the most...

Marrakech: A City That Works Best When You Stop Following the Map Marrakech functions on disorientation. The medina (old walled city) was designed over centuries without a grid system, and the narrow lanes that connect the souks, riads, mosques, and fondouks (trading caravanserais) follow logic that made sense to medieval merchants moving between specific craft quarters. Getting lost is not a...

Tokyo: A City That Rewards Slowing Down Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area in the world at roughly 37 million people across the greater metro region, and it consistently ranks as one of the safest, cleanest, and most logistically functional major cities on earth. The food quality across almost all price levels is remarkable (the greater Tokyo area has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any...

Villa del Balbianello: The Most Cinematic Place on Lake Como Villa del Balbianello is the kind of place that looks like set design but is entirely real. The 18th-century loggia perched on a promontory at the southern tip of a wooded headland, the terraced gardens dropping in tiers toward the lake, the carved balustrades with Lake Como framed between them: it is all exactly as dramatic as it looks...

Kronborg Castle: The Real Elsinore and What Shakespeare Got Right Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, Denmark, is the fortress that Shakespeare immortalised as Elsinore in Hamlet (1600). The connection is not entirely fictional: Shakespeare set his play at the Danish royal court and would have known about the castle from diplomatic dispatches and the accounts of English players who performed there in...

The Statue of Liberty: Getting There, Getting In, and Not Wasting a Day The Statue of Liberty is genuinely worth visiting, but the way most people do it – buy a ferry ticket at the last minute, arrive mid-morning, join a two-hour queue – turns a good experience into a frustrating one. A bit of advance planning changes the entire day. The Ticketing System Statue Cruises runs the only...

The Pantanal: Where to Find Jaguars in South America The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland at approximately 150,000 square kilometres, spread across western Brazil (Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul states), Bolivia, and Paraguay. It is the best place in South America to see jaguars in the wild, and arguably the best place in the world outside protected East African reserves...

Exploring Enchanting Hanoi: A Comprehensive Guide for Tourists Hanoi has been the political and cultural capital of Vietnam, on and off, for more than a thousand years. The result is a city where narrow medieval guild streets, colonial French boulevards, socialist-era state buildings, ancient temple complexes, and an endless stream of motorbikes coexist in unusually dense proximity. It is a city...

World’s End, Sri Lanka: The Cliff That Drops 900 Metres Into the Lowlands World’s End is a sheer escarpment in the Horton Plains National Park in central Sri Lanka, where the plateau edge drops approximately 870 metres in a near-vertical cliff to the southern lowland jungles below. On clear mornings, the view stretches past the tea plantations and forests of the hill country to the...

Vigeland Sculpture Park: One of Europe’s Most Surprising Free Attractions Vigeland Sculpture Park in Frogner Park, Oslo, is the world’s largest sculpture park created by a single artist. It holds 212 sculptures in bronze, granite, and wrought iron by Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, arranged along a 850-metre axis through the park. Entry is free, it is open 24 hours, and it sees...

Tokyo DisneySea: The Best Disney Park in the World (Yes, Really) Tokyo DisneySea is not a copy of any other Disney park. Oriental Land Company designed it from scratch for the Japanese market, and the result is an original park that most theme park professionals consider the best-designed Disney property on earth. The theming is denser, the food is significantly better, and the atmosphere is more...

The Scottish Cafe in Lviv: A Cafe With an Unexpectedly Famous History The Scottish Cafe at 3 Kopernyka Street in Lviv has a history that most visitors who stop in for a coffee do not realise they are sitting inside. Before World War II, when Lviv was the Polish city of Lwów, the cafe was the regular meeting place for a group of Polish mathematicians who would later become some of the most...