Japan
Unzen
A hot-spring town where Christians were martyred in the boiling pools and the earth still steams.
The mountain remembers. The hells of Unzen — boiling pools and hissing vents across a sulphur-stained plateau — were used in the seventeenth century to torture and kill Christian converts on the orders of the local lord, and the earth here has not stopped steaming since. Unzen, in Japan's Nagasaki Prefecture, is a volcanic landscape where violence and beauty have shared the ground for centuries.
Unzen lies inside Unzen-Amakusa National Park, one of Japan's first three national parks. A path from the onsen village threads the Unzen Hells, where acidic gases hiss and bubble out of the ground and a memorial to the martyrs stands beside the steam. In 1991 Mount Unzen erupted, and the pyroclastic flow down its eastern flank killed forty-three people; the Disaster Memorial Hall at Shimabara tells that story with survivor testimony and the science behind it. A ropeway climbs towards the peaks from Nita Pass, at its best in autumn, and the mountain ryokan feed their baths from the same geothermal source as the hells.
Couple
The volcanic hells by day, a mountain ryokan onsen by evening, and the peaks by ropeway in autumn colour — Unzen layers geological drama on traditional comfort.
Solo
The disaster memorial and the martyrs' memorial demand individual reflection. Unzen is not comfortable, but it is deeply affecting.
- The Unzen Hells hiss and bubble with acidic gas across a sulphur-stained plateau that smells like the planet's insides.
- Christians were martyred in these boiling pools in the seventeenth century on the local lord's orders — the memorial stands beside the steam.
- The 1991 eruption's pyroclastic flow killed forty-three people, and the Disaster Memorial Hall below the mountain tells it with survivor testimony.
- A ropeway climbs from Nita Pass towards the peaks, at its best when the hills turn red and orange in autumn.
Guzoni — Shimabara's hotpot of mochi rice cakes and ten kinds of local ingredients in a light broth — below the mountain.
Kanzarashi, Shimabara's chilled rice-flour dumplings in cold spring water and syrup, the peninsula's summer sweet.
Moustiers-Sainte-Marie
France
A gold star on a chain slung between two cliffs above a village of faïence painters.
Les Baux-de-Provence
France
Ruined fortress walls dissolving into white rock as if the mountain were slowly swallowing them.
Scanno
Italy
A mountain village above a heart-shaped lake, where women still wear traditional dress on feast days.
Triunfo
Brazil
Fog on dry-stone walls, in a scrap of rainforest stranded above the drought country.
Tsuwano
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Koi swimming through the stone-lined gutters of a valley town the modern world forgot.
Gokayama
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Thatched farmhouses like praying hands, where a secret gunpowder trade once hid in the snow.
Tomonoura
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A harbour so intact that Miyazaki lived here two months and drew Ponyo's world from it.
Matsue
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A lakeside castle city where Lafcadio Hearn heard ghost stories the West had never imagined.