France
Trôo
A troglodyte village hollowed into the cliff face where people still live inside the rock.
The chimneys poke through the grass above and the front doors open in the cliff face below. Trôo in France is a troglodyte village built into tufa rock, where people still live inside the hill — real houses, with letterboxes and window boxes, carved into the stone. The Talking Well at the top amplifies whispers into booming echoes, and nobody has fully explained the acoustics.
Trôo is built vertically into a tufa cliff above the Loir valley (the Loir, not the more famous Loire), with troglodyte dwellings carved into the rock face at multiple levels, many still inhabited. The village's Puits qui Parle — the Talking Well — is a natural acoustic phenomenon that amplifies sounds dropped into its shaft, an effect documented since at least the medieval period. The Collegiate Church of Saint-Martin, at the summit, holds Romanesque murals dating from the 12th century. The Grotte Pétrifiante, a cave below the village, contains formations created by mineral-rich water depositing calcite over objects placed in its flow — a process used commercially to 'petrify' everyday items. The Loir valley below is quieter and less touristed than the Loire, with small-scale vineyards producing Coteaux du Vendômois wines.
Solo
The vertical climb from river level through troglodyte doorways to the Talking Well at the top is a walk through inhabited geology. The Loir valley below is quiet enough that the only competition for attention is the river.
Couple
There is something irreducibly endearing about houses carved into a cliff with functioning letterboxes. The Talking Well adds whimsy, the Romanesque murals add depth, and the emptiness of the Loir valley adds peace.
- People still live inside the cliff face — troglodyte houses with chimneys poking through the grass above.
- The Talking Well amplifies every whisper into a booming echo — a medieval curiosity that still works.
- The village stacks vertically up the tufa cliff, connected by steep lanes and stairways cut into the rock.
- The Loir valley below (not the Loire) is quieter and less touristed than its famous near-namesake.
Goat's cheese from the Loir valley caves — aged underground, with an earthy mineral rind.
Fouaces — puffy bread rolls from the local fournils, split and filled with rillettes.
Queenstown
New Zealand
The town where bungee jumping was born, cradled between a glacial lake and jagged peaks.
Sete Cidades
Portugal
Twin crater lakes, one emerald, one sapphire, fill a volcanic caldera wreathed in Azorean mist.
Silverton
United States
A narrow-gauge steam train delivers you to a mining ghost town at 9,318 feet.
Vale do Paúl
Cape Verde
Sugarcane terraces spill down a volcanic crater into the greenest valley in the archipelago.
Sénanque Abbey
France
Cistercian silence surrounded by lavender rows so purple they vibrate in the June heat.
Mont-Saint-Michel
France
A granite abbey rising from quicksand flats where the tide races in faster than horses.
Étretat
France
Chalk arches punched through sea cliffs like cathedral windows opening onto the Channel.
Porquerolles
France
Car-free island trails through umbrella pines to beaches with Caribbean water and no crowd.