Pakistan
Bahawalpur
An Italian palace built for a desert nawab, glowing at dusk in a Punjabi backstreet.
Noor Mahal appears where no palace should be — an Italian-styled confection of domes and balustrades rising from an ordinary Punjabi street, built for a nawab who ruled a desert state larger than the Netherlands. Bahawalpur was once wealthy enough to commission European architects, and the evidence still stands across the city in varying states of grandeur — palaces you can walk up to almost by accident.
Bahawalpur was the seat of the Abbasi nawabs, a princely dynasty that ruled an area larger than the Netherlands until accession to Pakistan in 1955. Their ambitions produced Noor Mahal — the Italian-style palace of 1872, now restored and open to visitors — and Darbar Mahal, a grander residence still in military use and seen only from outside. The Indo-Saracenic central library anchors the old city alongside Mughal-era mosques and bazaars selling the city's saffron-laced sohan halwa, and princely-era buildings appear without warning between shops selling dates and pottery. Bahawalpur is also the gateway to the Cholistan Desert and Derawar Fort — the city every dune journey starts from.
Solo
Bahawalpur's princely grandeur is best explored on foot — the old city's lanes reveal palaces between date bazaars, and the halwa shops give a reason to stop at every corner.
Couple
Mughal mosques, European-commissioned palaces, and bustling bazaars sit side by side — layered history that reveals something different at every turn.
- Noor Mahal — built 1872 in Italian neoclassical style for the Abbasi nawabs — is restored and open, glowing under evening lights.
- Darbar Mahal, the grander residence, remains in military use — glimpsed over its walls like a secret.
- The central museum holds the princely state's inheritance — jade vessels, jewelled weapons, illustrated manuscripts.
- The Cholistan dunes and Derawar's sunrise bastions begin where the city's streets run out.
Halwa puri breakfast in the old city — spiced chana, soft potato bhujia, puris straight from the oil.
Fresh dates from Cholistan's edge — some of Pakistan's finest, sticky and dark.
Raufarhöfn
Iceland
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Mértola
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A whitewashed hill town whose mosque became a church — the mihrab still faces Mecca.
Walhalla
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A railway snakes through fern valley to a gold town squeezed onto one narrow street.
Lampa
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A rose-pink Andean town hiding a full-scale Pietà replica in its colonial church.
