Italy
Lampedusa
Closer to Africa than Sicily, a wind-scoured island hiding a Caribbean-white beach.
The water at Spiaggia dei Conigli is so clear that boats appear to hover, their shadows sharp on the sand metres below. The island is flat and wind-scoured, its limestone scrub more North African than Sicilian. At dusk the sky takes colours that belong to the Sahara.
Lampedusa lies about 113 kilometres from Tunisia and 175 from Sicily, closer to Africa than to the country it belongs to. Rabbit Beach ranks repeatedly among the world's finest, and it works for its living: the cove is a managed reserve where loggerhead turtles nest. Phoenician, Roman and Arab boats all sheltered in these harbours, and the crossing traffic of our own century has written the island into modern history too. Beyond the one town, the interior is empty scrub, prickly pear and dry-stone walls to the horizon.
Couple
Clear water, wild scrubland and Saharan light make a remoteness worth crossing half the Mediterranean for.
Solo
Snorkel the reserve, walk the empty interior and eat couscous at the harbour; Italy at its most stripped back.
Family
The reserve's water runs clear over pale sand, and turtle-nesting season adds wildlife few Italian beaches offer.
- Tunisia lies about 113 kilometres away and Sicily 175; the island sits closer to Africa than to Italy.
- Rabbit Beach's reserve manages entry so loggerhead turtles can keep nesting on it.
- Phoenician, Roman and Arab boats all sheltered in these harbours long before the ferries.
- The interior is North African scrub, prickly pear and stone walls to the horizon.
Fish couscous is the island's plate, North Africa unmistakable this far south.
The day's catch grills whole on the harbour, the simplest and best meal there is here.
Buracona
Cape Verde
For two hours around midday, sunlight sets a submerged lava cave burning electric blue.
Puerto Deseado
Argentina
Tiny black-and-white dolphins spin through a flooded river canyon meeting the open sea.
Lake Baringo
Kenya
Hot springs steam from a volcanic island where hippos and fish eagles rule the shallows.
Cape Agulhas
South Africa
Africa ends in low fynbos, shipwreck water and a red-striped lighthouse.
Lucca
Italy
Renaissance walls wide enough to cycle on, wrapped round the city where Puccini was born.
Tivoli
Italy
Two millennia of water engineering, from Hadrian's pools to Renaissance fountains powered by gravity.
Assisi
Italy
Pink stone streets climbing toward Giotto's frescoes, the Umbrian plain spreading gold and green below.
Ravenna
Italy
Byzantine mosaics so luminous the gold tiles still burn after fifteen centuries.