England
Stratford-upon-Avon
Half-timbered streets where Shakespeare was born and the swans own the river.
The man who wrote the English language was born, married and buried within a few streets of each other — and the town has spent four centuries making sure you know it. Stratford-upon-Avon is Shakespeare's cradle, and the Royal Shakespeare Company keeps the words spoken where they were first imagined.
Shakespeare's Birthplace on Henley Street, Anne Hathaway's Cottage out at Shottery and Holy Trinity Church where he lies buried form a walking trail through the biography — his school still teaches, and sixteenth-century timber leans over Chapel Street and High Street as it did in his lifetime. The RSC's riverside theatres, the Royal Shakespeare and the Swan, stage productions year-round that draw audiences from around the world, with swans patrolling the Avon outside the stage door as if contracted. Beyond the Bard, the canal basin joins the wider waterways, rowing boats work the river, and a butterfly farm beside the theatre — among Europe's largest — adds a dimension the Elizabethans never predicted.
Solo
Attend a matinee alone — an RSC solo seat feels like a privilege, and the river walk afterwards lets the language settle.
Couple
An RSC performance and dinner on the river connect four centuries of English language and landscape in a single evening.
Family
The houses tell Shakespeare's story in rooms children can walk through, with the river, the butterflies and the canal boats for when the Bard begins to blur.
- Birthplace, school, wife's cottage and grave all sit within one afternoon's walk.
- The RSC performs the canon year-round in theatres on the Avon's bank.
- Tudor timber leans over streets Shakespeare walked to school.
- Canal basin, butterfly farm and river boats fill the day beyond the Bard.
A pre-theatre supper within sight of the stage door.
Warwickshire honey ice cream from an artisan parlour en route to the river.
Campeche
Mexico
Pastel streets and surviving bastions face the Gulf from a fortified historic centre.
Paraty
Brazil
A colonial port the sea washes through on spring tides, with rainforest at its back.
Al Ain Oasis
United Arab Emirates
A 3,000-year-old falaj still waters 147,000 date palms in the middle of a desert city.
Mérida
Mexico
A white-walled city where henequen mansions age gracefully and Sunday streets fill with dancing.
St Ives
England
Light so luminous it lured a century of painters to this harbour of turquoise shallows.
Bamburgh
England
A fortress on volcanic rock rising from sand so wide the castle looks painted.
Aldeburgh
England
Salt wind and Britten's music haunting a shingle beach where fishing boats still launch.
Lindisfarne
England
A tidal island monastery where the causeway drowns twice daily and the tide writes the rules.