Thayatal National Park is one of Austria’s most beautiful but least-known protected areas — a dramatic 13-kilometre-long valley on the Czech border where the Thaya River has carved a deep, meandering canyon through ancient metamorphic rock, creating a richly forested landscape that is home to wildcats, black storks, and over 40 species of orchid. Together […]
Møns Klint is Denmark’s most dramatic natural wonder — a 6-kilometre stretch of brilliant white chalk cliffs rising 128 metres above the turquoise Baltic Sea on the island of Møn. Formed from the fossilised shells of microscopic coccolithophores over 70 million years ago, these gleaming cliffs offer one of northern Europe’s most breathtaking coastal landscapes, […]
Gravensteen Castle — the “Castle of the Counts” — is one of Europe’s most formidable and well-preserved medieval fortresses, a brooding grey-stone giant rising from the heart of Ghent in Belgium with castle walls, turrets, and a central keep so intact you can almost hear the clanking armour in its halls. Built in 1180 by […]
San Gimignano – Medieval Manhattan in Italy Updated: December 20, 2020 | By Claire | More San Gimignano – the city of the beautiful towers – is a small walled medieval hill town located in north-central Italy in the province of Siena, Tuscany. The town lies 56 km south of Florence and 38 km north-west […]
Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape – one of the largest artificial landscapes in Europe | Czech Republic Updated: May 16, 2020 | By Claire | More Lednice-Valtice Area – sometimes called as “Perl of South Moravia” is a region in south-east of Czech Republic, close to Slovak and Austrian borders. This region, covering an area of almost […]
Categories: Czech Republic, Sights
Maastricht is one of the Netherlands’ most distinctive cities — a vibrant university town whose medieval heart of cobbled streets, Roman ruins, and Gothic churches has more in common with Flanders or Wallonia than with the canal-ringed cities of Holland. Sitting at the southernmost tip of the Netherlands, wedged between Belgium and Germany, Maastricht’s cosmopolitan, […]
Categories: Netherlands, Sights
The windmills of Kinderdijk are the most famous Dutch landscape on Earth — 19 beautifully preserved 18th-century windmills lined up along the canals of the Alblasserwaard polder near Rotterdam, forming a UNESCO World Heritage site that is the single strongest image of the Netherlands in the global imagination. More than just a photo opportunity, Kinderdijk […]
Categories: Netherlands, Sights
Hoge Veluwe National Park is the Netherlands’ largest and most diverse protected area — a stunning 5,400-hectare mosaic of heathland, shifting sand dunes, and ancient woodland in the province of Gelderland that contains one of the world’s great art collections inside the park: the Kröller-Müller Museum, home to the second-largest collection of Van Gogh paintings […]
Categories: Nature, Netherlands
Danube-Auen National Park is one of Europe’s last remaining large-scale floodplain ecosystems — a 9,300-hectare protected natural paradise of meandering river channels, old-growth riparian forest, and vast water meadows stretching along the Danube between Vienna and Bratislava. One of Austria’s six national parks and part of the transboundary Ramsar wetland complex shared with Slovakia, the […]
Tivoli – place of entertainment for wealthy Romans | Italy Updated: December 25, 2020 | By Claire | More Where the Aniene River falls from the Sabine hills, is where you will find the ancient city of Tivoli. Located only 30 kilometres from Rome, one can see the entire city in all of its glory […]
