Mist clings to the limestone cliff as the morning sun struggles to pierce through the fog. High above the Orava river, a white walled fortress rises like a guardian from a forgotten age. Orava Castle does not merely sit upon the landscape. It commands it. Built in the 13th century atop a steep rock formation, […]
Fifty-two towers and nearly three kilometres of ramparts encircle the medieval citadel of Carcassonne. The fortress rises above the Aude River with fairy-tale turrets and pointed slate roofs that look as though they belong in a storybook. The inner streets hold stone houses, small squares, and the basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus with its […]
Few churches in Rome hide their masterpiece quite so unassumingly. San Pietro in Vincoli sits on the Esquiline Hill, its simple brick facade giving no hint of the artistic treasure waiting inside. Visitors come for one thing: Michelangelo’s Moses, carved from a single block of Carrara marble. The prophet sits with horns on his head, […]
Categories: Cities, Italy, Religious Monuments, Rome, Sights, Sights, Virtual Travel
The parterre stretches in perfect geometric symmetry, clipped hedges forming patterns that have remained unchanged since the early 19th century. Muskau Park, straddling the border between Germany and Poland, is the largest English-style landscape garden in Central Europe, a masterpiece of landscape architecture created by Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau. The park covers over 700 hectares, […]
Český Šternberk Castle is one of the best-preserved Gothic castles in the Czech Republic, a magnificent 13th-century fortress dramatically perched on a rocky promontory above the Sázava River in central Bohemia, which has been continuously owned and inhabited by the same noble family (the Šternberks) for over 760 years, one of the longest continuous family […]
Categories: Czech Republic, Sights, Sights
Zlatá ulička (Golden Lane) is the most romantic and famous part of Prague Castle, a tiny, impossibly picturesque street of miniature 16th-century houses built directly into the castle fortifications, originally home to the castle’s goldsmiths (hence the name), later to Kafka (who lived at number 22 in 1916-1917 and wrote much of his early work […]
Categories: Czech Republic, Sights, Sights
