The UNESCO World Heritage site in Modena is the main historic square, with major architectural masterpieces surrounding it. Here is a fragment of two named ones, the exquisite – and leaning (you will have to trust me on this) – Torre Civica and the Cathedral. Piazza Grande, on…
The incredibly picturesque area of Cinque Terre, along with Portovenere and a trio of islands to the immediate south, are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list for their historic and cultural value, to say nothing of their beauty. For nearly a millennium, the rugged and mountainous Ligurian coast made…
The towns of Mantua (Mantova in Italian) and Sabbioneta are paired into a single World Heritage site on the basis of representing two different facets of Renaissance city planning: the former an example of an existing city rebuilt and renewed, the latter a completely new town built according to the…
Verona is enshrined on the UNESCO list as the whole city, with a large number of buildings and monuments mentioned in the inscription. It was the first stop on our recent sojourn. The heart of the city is lively Piazza delle Erbe. It hosted a smaller version of the market…
Sevilla is probably at the top of my “been once, want to see again” list. Despite its magnificence, for me, it is not as impressive as Granada or Cordoba, which contributed to the fact that we only managed to visit it one single time. The World Heritage site, comprised of…
Sanssouci Palace and Gardens, the major part of this World Heritage site, was an intraday destination on the way from Berlin to Dresden during our two-weeks-plus long voyage around Germany nearly ten years ago. We’ve always been partial to grand royal palace and grounds combos, and Sanssouci is resplendent, a…
I have on multiple occasions professed my inclination for climbing elevated viewpoints in any given location. That tendency puts this particular World Heritage site especially close to my heart. In addition to admiring architectural qualities and civic history significance for which these towers are inscribed on the UNESCO List, I…
Reims Cathedral is not the only great church that prompted us to plan a stopover in town specifically so that we could visit it. Off the top of my head I can think of at least three others. Chartres Cathedral was the very first of such churches, chronologically speaking. On…
If you ever drive through Reims on A344, you might be able to glimpse the sight of its storied cathedral from the car windows. My deep admiration for sacred architecture prompted us to plan an overnight stay in Reims on one such drive, in order to explore the cathedral site…
The Tower of London, dating from William’s Conquest in 1066, is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list for a number of reasons, among them as an outstanding example of medieval military architecture as well as for its role in the European history. It is certainly one of the must-see…
Kiev is famous for its domed cathedrals, and on my only free day of the recent business trip I put aside considerations of unrest in the city center and spent time exploring some of the city sights, including its multi-location World Heritage site. There is no doubt that on my…
On our last visit to Siena, my new-found focus on photography paid off in that I finally ended up with superior material to do justice to the city, something that was beyond my reach when I made this entry about a year ago in my “favorite sights” series. For instance,…
Continuing with the theme of revisiting some of the best entries in “my favorite sights” series that I ran on the blog in the past, here are a few additional shots of San Gimignano – one of the all-time favorite stops on our travels that we certainly could not bypass…
Florence entry in the erstwhile series was one of the best ones. I always managed to come away from visits to Florence with good photographic material. As a result, on our recent day in the birthplace of Renaissance, quite a few of my shots were of sights I already photographed…
Ok, I admit, I am a bit obsessive. Now that I started to pay attention to how many World Heritage sites I’ve visited, I am looking for opportunities to increase my tally. Actually, in Tuscany, I have already been – more than once in practically all cases – to most…
Gary Arndt travels the world. I never got into any details of how that came around, but he apparently made a lifestyle change about six years ago and since then had become a sort of celebrity in the travel photography field. I actually do not find either his prose on…
Despite all of the attempts the tour-books made to convince me that there is plenty to do and see in Pisa beyond its singular top sight, it remains a one-location city for me after several visits. The fantastic Piazza del Duomo (also colloquially known as Piazza dei Miracoli), the home…
A follow-up photo-essay from more recent trip can be found here. Many tour-books call San Gimignano “Manhattan of Tuscany”, on account of a dozen or so surviving medieval towers that form a veritable skyscraper cluster. The towers attract huge crowds of tourists to the town whose ancient core remains attractive…
Segovia – within an easy day-trip distance from Madrid – is one of those picturesque locations, where every turn around a corner brings you to a great photographic spot. It boasts a few major can’t-miss sights, but it is the often flamboyant house ornamentation on its narrow pedestrian streets that…
Bath is an elegant city in south-west England, famous for its roman baths (hence, the name of the town) as well as for its Georgian architecture (dating from the 18th century, when England had a succession of kings named George, hence, the moniker). It has a fair share of attractions,…