The White House, Washington DC The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the US President, built between 1792 and 1800 and continuously occupied since John Adams in 1800. The building stands on 18 acres at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and is simultaneously the most security-restricted and the most symbolically accessible building in American government: millions of people...

Matsumoto Castle, Japan Matsumoto Castle is one of Japan’s few surviving original castles: the six-storey main tower, built between 1593 and 1614, has never burned down or been demolished and retains its Sengoku-period structure. The exterior is black wood panelling and white plaster, which is why it is called Karasu-jo (Crow Castle). It sits on flat ground, not a hilltop, with the moat...

The Trans-Siberian Railway The Trans-Siberian is the longest railway in the world: 9,289 km from Moscow to Vladivostok, crossing seven time zones and passing through the southern Urals, the West Siberian Plain, and the mountains and forests east of Lake Baikal. The original line was completed in 1916 after 25 years of construction. There are three principal routes depending on where you want to...

Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic Karlštejn is the most visited castle in the Czech Republic after Prague Castle, and unlike many heavily-touristed medieval sites, it actually justifies the attention. Charles IV built it between 1348 and 1365 specifically to house the crown jewels and imperial regalia of the Holy Roman Empire. The castle sits on a limestone ridge above the Berounka River valley...

Sardinia Sardinia is Italy’s second-largest island and it operates as a largely separate entity from the mainland, with its own language (Sardo), its own cultural traditions, and a cuisine that owes more to the interior highlands than to the sea. The beaches get the most tourist attention, and fairly: the water along the Costa Smeralda in the northeast is among the clearest in the...

Yosemite National Park, California Yosemite Valley is a 1.2 km-wide, 11 km-long glacial trench cut into the Sierra Nevada granite, with valley walls rising 900-1,400 metres on both sides. The valley floor holds the Merced River, three major waterfalls (Yosemite, Bridalveil, Nevada/Vernal), and about half of the park’s visitor infrastructure. The park itself covers 3,000 square kilometres of...

Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC sits at the western edge of Point Grey, 15 km from downtown Vancouver, on a site overlooking the Strait of Georgia. The building was designed by Arthur Erickson and opened in 1976; its defining feature is the Great Hall, a high-ceilinged glass-and-concrete gallery that houses monumental Northwest Coast...

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is one of the largest mosques in the world and the primary religious landmark in Abu Dhabi. Construction ran from 1996 to 2007 and incorporated craftspeople and materials from multiple countries: the marble cladding is Italian, the chandeliers are from Germany and Morocco, the carpets from Iran, and the columns from Greece. The...

Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam Phu Quoc is a 574-square-kilometre island in the Gulf of Thailand, administratively part of Kien Giang province in the far southwest of Vietnam, and closer to the Cambodian coast than to mainland Vietnam. For most of its history it was lightly inhabited, covered in primary forest, and known primarily for the fish sauce (nuoc mam) produced from the anchovy-rich waters...

Flanders Fields, Belgium The Flemish landscape around Ypres (Ieper) in West Belgium absorbed four years of attritional fighting between 1914 and 1918 that killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, France, Germany, and Belgium. The front line barely moved during those four years, crossing and recrossing the same ground. The Ypres...

The Colosseum, Rome The Colosseum is the largest amphitheatre ever built, capable of holding an estimated 50,000-80,000 spectators. Construction began under Vespasian in 70 CE and was completed under Titus in 80 CE, with further additions under Domitian. For 400 years it hosted gladiatorial contests, animal hunts, public executions, dramas, and other public spectacles. After the end of these...

Etosha National Park, Namibia Etosha is structured differently to most African safari parks. Instead of following guides through bush hoping to stumble across wildlife, you drive a network of well-maintained gravel roads between waterholes and sit. The animals come to you. In the dry season (May-October), when the only water for hundreds of kilometres is at these artificial points, the variety and...

Isle of Man The Isle of Man sits in the middle of the Irish Sea, roughly equidistant from Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales, though politically it belongs to none of them. It is a Crown Dependency with its own parliament (the Tynwald, which claims to be the oldest continuous parliament in the world), its own laws, its own currency technically at par with sterling, and a strong sense of its own...

Exploring the Banaue Rice Terraces: A Guide for Visitors Introduction Carved into the mountains of Ifugao province in the northern Philippines roughly 2,000 years ago, the Banaue Rice Terraces are among the most remarkable agricultural landscapes on earth. The Ifugao people shaped these terraces by hand, building stone walls and an irrigation system fed by ancient forests above. The result is a...

Hallstatt, Austria Hallstatt is one of those places that looks almost too perfect to be real, and it’s paid the price for that. A replica was built in China. Influencer content has been churned out at scale. On a summer weekend, the village of around 800 residents can receive 10,000 visitors in a single day, which the locals have been vocal about hating. Go anyway, but do it right. Getting...

Stirling, Scotland Stirling controlled the lowest crossing point of the River Forth for much of Scottish history, which is why so many decisive battles were fought in its vicinity and why its castle sits on one of the most defensible volcanic crags in the country. Two engagements in particular defined Scottish history here: the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, where William Wallace defeated a...

Notre-Dame de Paris The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris stands on the Ile de la Cite, the island in the Seine that formed the original settlement of the city. Construction began in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully and the main structure was largely complete by 1345, though the west facade and towers took until 1250. For nearly 900 years the cathedral has been the geographic and spiritual centre...

Trinity College Dublin Trinity College Dublin occupies 47 acres in the centre of Dublin and was founded in 1592 by Elizabeth I. It is the only constituent college of the University of Dublin and Ireland’s oldest university. The campus itself is open to the public; walking through the Front Gate on College Green brings you into Parliament Square, surrounded by the Chapel, the Examination...

Wiener Riesenrad (Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel) The Riesenrad has been part of the Viennese Prater since 1897, making it one of the oldest operating Ferris wheels in the world. It survived two world wars (though it was destroyed in 1945 and rebuilt), multiple ownerships, and decades of changing fashion to become one of Vienna’s most recognised symbols. The Third Man used it for the famous...

Death Valley National Park Death Valley holds the verified world record for highest air temperature (56.7C in July 1913 at Furnace Creek) and sits at the lowest point in North America (Badwater Basin, 86 metres below sea level). The park covers 13,600 square kilometres of desert, salt flat, and mountain range in eastern California and Nevada, and it is genuinely hostile for about four months of...

Delhi: What to Prioritise and What to Skip Delhi is enormous, chaotic, and frequently overwhelming on a first visit. It has 32 million people, seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and some of the worst air quality of any major city on earth. None of that is reason to avoid it. But going in with a clear plan matters more here than almost anywhere. Old Delhi vs New Delhi The Mughal old city around...

Pooh Bridge, Ashdown Forest: Manage Your Expectations The bridge itself is a small wooden footbridge over a narrow stream in the East Sussex heathland. It’s the original location where A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin played Poohsticks, and the book illustrations by E.H. Shepard were drawn with this stretch of woodland in mind. That context is everything. Taken on its own, it’s...

Potala Palace, Lhasa The Potala Palace rises 13 storeys above Lhasa on Marpo Ri (Red Hill), dominating the skyline of the Tibetan capital from virtually every approach. The palace complex covers 130,000 square metres and contains over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, and 200,000 statues distributed across the White Palace (administrative quarters and winter residence) and the Red Palace (chapels,...

Parc Güell: Worth It, But Only If You Plan Ahead Most people arrive at Parc Güell expecting a relaxed afternoon stroll and leave having spent 45 minutes queuing to get into the Monumental Zone. Skip that frustration. Buy tickets online before you fly. The ticketed section costs €10 for adults and covers the Monumental Core: the famous tiled esplanade, Gaudí’s salamander fountain at the main...

Patagonia, South America Patagonia covers the southern cone of South America across both Chile and Argentina, roughly 1,000 km from the Lake District near Bariloche to Cape Horn at the continent’s tip. The scale is the first thing you need to accept: it’s enormous, the infrastructure is thin, and distances between key sites are large. Planning matters here more than almost anywhere...

Krakow, Poland Krakow was Poland’s capital for five centuries before Warsaw took over in 1596, and the city still carries that weight. The Old Town and Wawel Hill were not bombed during the Second World War, which makes Krakow something rare in central Europe: a genuinely intact medieval city. The Rynek Glowny (Main Market Square) is the largest medieval market square in Europe, roughly 200...

The Forbidden City (Palace Museum), Beijing The Forbidden City served as the imperial palace of China through the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1420 until 1912. The complex covers 72 hectares in the centre of Beijing, contains 980 surviving buildings with 8,728 rooms, and housed the emperor, his court, and approximately 9,000 people who maintained and served the imperial household. Entry for anyone...

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is a compact city of about 685,000 people on the Massachusetts coast, with a walkable downtown that manages to contain an unusual density of American history, university infrastructure, and very good seafood. It is also stubborn about certain things: the streets do not follow a grid, parking is genuinely terrible, and Bostonians walk across intersections when they...

Suva, Fiji Suva is not the Fiji most visitors come for. The beaches and resorts that define Fiji’s reputation are concentrated on the Coral Coast and the Mamanuca and Yasawa island groups, well to the west. Suva is the capital and the country’s largest city: urban, rainy, relatively affordable, and genuinely interesting in a way the resort strip isn’t. The city sits on a...

Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion), Kyoto Kinkaku-ji is Kyoto’s most photographed sight, which creates a specific problem: any image you take is going to look exactly like every other image you have seen of it. The three-storey Zen pavilion covered in gold leaf, reflected in the mirror-flat Kyoko-chi pond, is as perfect in person as it appears in photographs. The best approach is to stop trying to...

Taipei, Taiwan Taipei is a city of about 2.6 million people in northern Taiwan, efficiently served by a metro system, dense with food stalls, and considerably cheaper than Tokyo or Seoul for an equivalent standard of experience. The food is the main attraction for many visitors, and it earns the reputation. Taipei 101 and Xinyi Taipei 101 was the world’s tallest building from 2004 to 2010...

Iona, Scotland Iona is a small island of about 877 hectares off the southwest tip of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, accessible by a 10-minute ferry crossing from Fionnphort on Mull. There are no cars on Iona for visitors; the island has about 120 permanent residents. The combination of its early Christian history – Columba established his monastery here in 563 CE – and the quality of the...

Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris Notre-Dame caught fire on the evening of 15 April 2019. The spire collapsed. Most of the roof burned. The stone vaulted ceiling partly failed. The news footage went around the world within an hour. The cathedral was closed for reconstruction for the next five years, and the restoration work that followed – involving hundreds of craftspeople, millions of donated...

Las Vegas Las Vegas rewards you best when you arrive with specific plans rather than just turning up to see what happens. The Strip is enormous, the casinos are deliberately confusing, and without some idea of what you actually want, you’ll spend a week wandering between air-conditioned shops and buffet lines feeling slightly dazed. What to See The Strip runs roughly 6.7 kilometres along Las...

Honghe Hani Rice Terraces: How to Actually See Them The Hani rice terraces in Yunnan Province have been farmed continuously for over 1,300 years. The UNESCO listing in 2013 formalised what anyone who has stood at the Duoyishu viewpoint at sunrise already knew: this is one of the most extraordinary agricultural landscapes on earth. The terraces cascade down from 2,000 metres elevation to around...

Teatre-Museu Dali, Figueres Salvador Dali designed the Teatre-Museu Dali himself, inside the shell of a burnt-out municipal theatre in his hometown of Figueres, Catalonia. He called it “the largest surrealist object in the world,” which is either self-promotion or completely accurate depending on how you approach it. The building is topped with a geodesic dome and rimmed with giant...

The Rocky Mountains The Rockies run roughly 4,800 km from northern British Columbia in Canada down through Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. What “visit the Rockies” actually means depends almost entirely on which section you go to. Banff and Jasper in Canada are different in character from Yellowstone and Grand Teton in Wyoming, which are different again from Rocky Mountain...

Dali’s Rhinoceros, Marbella Salvador Dali’s bronze sculpture Rhinoceros Dressed in Lace stands in Marbella’s Avenida del Mar, the palm-lined promenade connecting the old town to the beachfront. The piece is part of a permanent outdoor collection of nine Dali sculptures installed along the avenue in 1994, gifted to the town by German art collector Wolfgang Rotstock. The rhinoceros...

Mount Roraima, Venezuela Mount Roraima is a tepui, a table-top mountain formed from ancient sandstone, rising to 2,810 metres on the triple border point where Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana meet. The plateau summit extends roughly 31 square kilometres, permanently above the cloud line for much of the year, and supports an ecosystem largely isolated from the surrounding lowland jungle: endemic...

Wadi Rum, Jordan Wadi Rum is a desert valley cut into sandstone and granite in southern Jordan, about 60 km east of Aqaba. The UNESCO dual World Heritage listing (natural and cultural, 2011) covers 74,000 hectares of desert landscape: narrow gorges, natural rock arches, towering cliffs, ancient petroglyphs, and open plains of orange and red sand. The combination of scale, colour, and silence gives...

Split, Croatia Split is a working port city that happens to contain a Roman palace at its centre. Diocletian built his retirement complex here around 305 AD, and the palace walls have been continuously inhabited ever since. Today roughly 3,000 people live inside those walls, in apartments and houses that incorporate the original Roman stonework into their foundations, cellars, and sometimes their...

Greek Islands: Which One, and Why It Matters Greece has around 6,000 islands and islets, of which roughly 250 are inhabited. The choice between them is enormous, and they are not interchangeable. Santorini and Mykonos are the international brand-names; they’re expensive, overcrowded in summer, and trade heavily on reputation. The lesser-known islands often offer better value, fewer queues,...

Munich, Bavaria Munich is the capital of Bavaria and Germany’s third-largest city, a place that functions simultaneously as a tech and finance centre, an art museum cluster of genuine international standing, and a city whose identity is inseparable from beer. All three things are real and none requires apologising for the others. Marienplatz and the Centre Marienplatz is the central square...

Oktoberfest, Munich Despite the name, Oktoberfest runs mainly in September. It typically opens in mid-September and closes on the first Sunday in October, or the 3rd of October if that falls later. The event runs for 16-18 days. About 6 million people attend annually. The beer is served in one-litre steins called Mass, each costing around €15. You will not carry more than two without significant...

Tintern Abbey, Wye Valley Tintern Abbey stands in the Wye Valley on the Welsh bank of the River Wye, about 5 miles north of Chepstow. The Cistercian monastery was founded in 1131 and reached its full scale in the late 13th century under the patronage of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 left it roofless and the lead stripped from the roof...

The Gobi Desert, Mongolia and China The Gobi is the fifth-largest desert in the world, covering around 1.3 million square kilometres across southern Mongolia and northern China. Contrary to what “desert” suggests, large sections of the Gobi are cold, rocky, and grassland rather than sand. The famous sand dunes account for a small fraction of the total area. The landscape shifts...

The Lake District, Cumbria The Lake District covers 2,362 square kilometres of Cumbria in northwest England and contains sixteen lakes, the highest peaks in England (Scafell Pike at 978 metres), and several million visitors per year, most of them concentrated in the southern lakes around Windermere and Ambleside. It became a National Park in 1951 and gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 2017....

Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol The Clifton Suspension Bridge is free to cross on foot or bicycle and takes about five minutes. That is the practical information. The more interesting information is what you are crossing: a bridge designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1831 when he was 24 years old, built to a significantly modified version of that design over 30 years later after his death,...

Tallinn Old Town Tallinn’s Old Town (Vanalinn) is one of the best-preserved medieval city centres in Northern Europe. The UNESCO World Heritage Site designation (1997) covers the roughly 1.5 square kilometres of the walled town, which retains most of its 13th and 14th-century street pattern, two distinct levels (Toompea hill and the lower town), and a working population of residents,...

Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania Kilimanjaro is a freestanding volcanic massif in northern Tanzania, rising 5,895 metres above sea level at Uhuru Peak on the Kibo crater rim. It is the highest point in Africa and, because it rises from a relatively flat base around 1,000 metres, the vertical relief is substantial: the summit sits nearly 5,000 metres above the surrounding plains. The mountain has three...