Italy
Paestum
Three Greek temples older than the Parthenon, still standing in an open Cilento field.
Three Doric temples rise from a flat field on the Cilento plain, columns the colour of dried honey in afternoon light. No scaffolding, no glass, no velvet ropes, just open ground between you and buildings older than the Parthenon. Crickets sing in the grass.
Paestum began as the Greek colony of Poseidonia around 600 BC, passed to Rome, and was finally abandoned to malaria and silence. Its three temples, raised between about 550 and 450 BC, stand among the best-preserved Doric buildings anywhere, Greece included, and you walk around them through open meadow. The museum holds the Tomb of the Diver, a painted slab from 480 BC whose young man arcs forever into blue water, a rare survival of Greek figured painting. The plain around the ruins is Italy's buffalo mozzarella heartland, with dairies selling cheese made that morning within sight of the columns.
Solo
Standing under a 2,500-year-old temple with no commentary in your ear is the unmediated encounter solo travel promises.
Couple
Temples at golden hour, then a mozzarella tasting at a dairy down the road: ancient grandeur and simple food, the Cilento in full.
Family
Open ground between huge columns gives children room to move, and the scale does the teaching.
- The three Doric temples predate the Parthenon and survive in better condition than most in Greece.
- The Tomb of the Diver preserves rare Greek painting, its young diver arcing forever into blue water.
- The site lets you circle the columns through open meadow at whatever pace the day allows.
- Buffalo mozzarella dairies sell morning-made cheese within sight of the temples.
Buffalo mozzarella made that morning sells within sight of the temples on the Sele plain.
White figs of the Cilento, dried and stuffed with walnuts, are a protected local delicacy.
Isla Chiloé (Tenaún)
Chile
Three timber towers rise above a quiet Chilote waterfront.
Huacas de Moche
Peru
Moche murals of spider gods and warrior priests, the paint still vivid after 1,500 years.
Túcume
Peru
A plain of eroded adobe pyramids rising from sugar cane like a drowned civilisation.
Cartago
Costa Rica
Two million walk through the night to a stone virgin who refuses to leave her rock.
Comacchio
Italy
Canals thread a brick lagoon town whose fortunes have always swum in on the eels.
Scanno
Italy
A mountain village above a heart-shaped lake, where women still wear traditional dress on feast days.
Scilla
Italy
Homer's sea monster laired here, now swordfish boats patrol the Strait of Messina at dawn.
Sabbioneta
Italy
A Renaissance ideal city built from scratch on a plain, one duke's geometric utopia.