Building sights in Europe
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Museumsquartier
The MuseumsQuartier is a remarkable ensemble of museums, cafés, restaurants and bars inside former imperial stables designed by Fischer von Erlach. This breeding ground of Viennese cultural life is the perfect place to hang out and watch or meet people on warm evenings. With over 60,000 sq metres of exhibition space, the complex is one of the world’s most ambitious cultural spaces. Of the combined tickets on offer, the MQ Kombi Ticket (€25) includes entry into every museum (Zoom only has a reduction) and a 30% discount on performances in the TanzQuartier Wien; MQ Art Ticket (€21.50) gives admission into the Leopold Museum, MUMOK, Kunsthalle and reduced entry into Zoom, pl…
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Documentation Centre
Cologne's Third Reich history is poignantly documented in the Documentation Centre. In the basement of the building was the local Gestapo prison where scores of people were interrogated, tortured and killed. Inscriptions on the basement cell walls offer a gut-wrenching record of the emotional and physical pain endured by inmates.
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Grande Arche de la Défense
La Défense’s draw card is the Grande Arche (Great Arch) – a remarkable, cube-like structure, 110m square, of white Carrara marble, grey granite and glass. It’s constructed out of 3600 prefabricated cases, each 2.8m square and 800g in weight, and the entire construction rests on a dozen 30m-tall underground pillars. Scale the cigarette-butt-littered steps to the foot of this incredible arch free of charge and ponder its meaning as ‘a window to the world, a symbol of hope for the future; that all men can meet freely’. Or pay to travel 1.6m per second to the ‘roof’ on the 35th floor, where temporary art exhibitions hang out alongside scaled models of the arch, a video sho…
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Gare Montparnasse
Brittany and places en route from Paris (eg Chartres, Angers, Nantes); TGV Atlantique Ouest and TGV Atlantique Sud-Ouest trains to Tours, Nantes, Bordeaux and other destinations in southwestern France.
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Chiesa di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
Built on the site of an ancient temple to Minerva, the Dominican Chiesa di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is the only Gothic church in Rome, although little remains of the original 13th-century design. Inside, in the Cappella Carafa (also called the Cappella della Annunciazione), you’ll find two superb 15th-century frescoes by Filippino Lippi and the majestic tomb of Pope Paul IV. Left of the high altar is one of Michelangelo’s lesser-known sculptures, Cristo Risorto (Christ Bearing the Cross; 1520). An altarpiece of the Madonna and Child in the second chapel in the northern transept is attributed to Fra Angelico, the Dominican friar and painter, who is also buried in the …
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Banya Bashi Mosque
Sofia's only working mosque was built in 1576 by the celebrated Ottoman architect Kodja Mimar Sinan, who also designed the Selim II Mosque in Edirne, Turkey. It's certainly an eye-catching edifice and the red brick minaret makes a convenient landmark. At the rear of the building is a small, recently excavated section of the bathhouse that once joined onto the mosque and a hot-water drinking fountain. Visitors are welcome outside prayer times if modestly dressed.
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Gran Casino Murcia
Murcia's resplendent casino first opened as a gentlemen's club in 1847. Beyond the decorative facade, completed in 1901, are an Arab-style vestibule and a patio. Penetrate as far as the magnificent ballroom and pop €1.00 in the slot for the 320 lamps of its candelabra to shimmer with light as Strauss's Radetsky March wafts from all corners.
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Sveti Sava
Started in 1935 and interrupted by Hitler, communism and lack of cash, Sveti Sava is billed as the biggest Orthodox church in the world. The church lies on the reputed site where the Turks burnt the relics of St Sava, the youngest son of a 12th-century ruler and founder of the independent Serbian Orthodox church.
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Old Town Hall
Prague’s Old Town Hall, founded in 1338, is a hotchpotch of medieval buildings acquired piecemeal over the centuries, presided over by a tall Gothic tower with a splendid Astronomical Clock. The main entrance is to the left of the clock; beyond that is the House at the Minute (dům U minuty), an arcaded building covered with Renaissance sgraffito – Franz Kafka lived here (1889–96) as a child just before the building was bought by the town council.
As well as housing the Old Town’s main tourist information office, the town hall has several historic attractions, and hosts art exhibitions on the ground floor and the 2nd floor. The guided tour takes you through the co…
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Klementinum
When the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I invited the Jesuits to Prague in 1556 to boost the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Bohemia, they selected one of the city’s choicest pieces of real estate and in 1587 set to work on the Church of the Holy Saviour (kostel Nejsvětějšího Spasitele), Prague’s flagship of the Counter-Reformation. The western façade faces Charles Bridge, its sooty stone saints glaring down at the traffic jam of trams and tourists on Křížovnické náměstí. After gradually buying up most of the adjacent neighbourhood, the Jesuits started building their college, the Klementinum, in 1653. By the time of its completion a century later it was the largest bu…
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Cathedral Church of St Deiniol
Also called the Cathedral Church of St Deiniol, the cathedral - surprisingly squat, partly due to lack of cash for a central spire - occupies one of the oldest ecclesiastical sites in Britain. Dedicated to St Deiniol, who founded a cell here in AD 525 and who was consecrated as bishop in AD 546, the cathedral's earliest traces are of a 12th-century stone building, while some of what you see today is based on reconstruction work in the late 13th century.
Responsibility for damage can be blamed on King John, whose men also burned the city, seized the bishop and ransomed him for 200 falcons. Further ravages took place at the turn of the 15th century, during the Glyndŵr rebel…
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Heilig-Bloedbasiliek
The Heilig-Bloedbasiliek takes its name from the relic of Christ's blood brought here after the Crusades, sometime between 1150 and 1200. The church has two distinct and highly contrasting sections: the sombre 12th-century lower chapel, built along pure Romanesque lines and almost devoid of decoration, and the much-renovated and lavishly embellished upper chapel, accessed by wide stairs near the lower chapel's entrance.
In the upper chapel is the silver tabernacle containing the phial that holds a few drops of the holy blood. This relic is still venerated in one-hour services at 10:00 and 15:00 every Friday. On Ascension Day it is paraded through the city in Bruges' bigge…
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Basilica di Santa Sabina
A genuinely spiritual spot, this solemn basilica was founded by Peter of Illyria in around AD 422. It was enlarged in the 9th century and again in 1216, just before it was given to the newly founded Dominican order – look out for the mosaic tombstone of Muñoz de Zamora, one of the order’s founding fathers, in the nave floor. A 20th-century restoration returned it to its original look. One of the few surviving 4th-century elements are the basilica’s cypress-wood doors. They feature 18 carved panels depicting biblical events, including one of the oldest Crucifixion scenes in existence. It’s quite hard to make out in the top left, but it depicts Jesus and the two thieves alt…
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Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Kaptol is dominated by the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, formerly known as St Stephen's, whose twin spires soar over the city. Built on the site of an earlier Romanesque cathedral, which had been destroyed by the Tartar invasion in 1242, construction of this cathedral began in the second half of the 13th century following the prototype of the church of St Urban in Troyes, France.
Although the cathedral's original Gothic structure has been transformed many times over, the sacristy still contains a cycle of frescoes that date from the second half of the 13th century.
As the furthest outpost of Christianity in the 15th century, the cathedral was surr…
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Kammergericht
West of Kleistpark, the imposing 1913 Kammergericht was the courthouse that staged the notorious show trials of the Nazi ‘people’s court’ against the participants – real and alleged – in the July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. Led by the fanatical judge Roland Freisler, hundreds of people were handed their death sentences; many were executed at Gedenkstätte Plötzensee, now a memorial site. Freisler, alas, was crushed to death by a falling beam in the court building during an air raid in February 1945, thereby avoiding what would undoubtedly have been a starring role at the Nuremberg Trials. After the war, the Allies used the building first as the seat o…
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Köpenick Rathaus
With its frilly turrets, soaring tower and stepped gable, Köpenick’s town hall exudes a fairytale quality but is actually more famous for an incident back in 1906. It involved an unemployed cobbler named Wilhelm Voigt, who managed to make a laughing stock of the Prussian authorities: costumed as an army captain, he marched upon the town hall, arrested the mayor, confiscated the city coffers and disappeared with the loot. And no one questioned his authority! At least for a while. Although quickly caught and convicted, Voigt became quite a celebrity for his chutzpah. Today a bronze statue of the Hauptmann of Köpenick guards the town hall entrance. There’s an entire exhi…
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Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Church
Set in a leafy garden just off the main road, the Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Church, or Church of the Seven Saints, as it's known in its more tongue-friendly translation, is dedicated to Sts Cyril and Methodius and their five disciples. Originally built as a mosque in 1528, it had already fallen into disuse by the time the Russians came along in 1878 and turned it into an arms depot.
After a brief spell as a prison, the structure was restored and remodelled in a style termed Bulgarian National Romanticism, and consecrated as a church in 1903. Inside, the walls are covered in traditional murals of saints, while an image of the Trinity decorates the huge central dome. The gilde…
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DZ Bank
The Brandenburger Tor stands sentinel over the elegant Pariser Platz, which was completely flattened in WWII, then spent the Cold War trapped just east of the Berlin Wall. Look around now: embassies, banks and a luxury hotel have snapped up the city’s priciest real estate and hired top architects to rebuild in style and from the ground up. California-based deconstructivist Frank Gehry, for instance, masterminded the DZ Bank at No 3, which packs a visual punch past those heavy doors. You’ll only get as far as the foyer but that’s enough for a glimpse at the vast atrium with its bizarre free-form sculpture vaguely reminiscent of a fish but actually a conference room! Next…
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Plaza Mayor
Plaza Mayor is the centrepiece of monumental Salamanca and the modern city's beating heart. Built between 1729 and 1755, Salamanca's exceptional grand square is widely considered Spain's most beautiful central plaza, particularly at night when illuminated to magical effect. Designed by Alberto Churriguera, it's a remarkably harmonious and controlled baroque display.
The medallions placed around the plaza bear the busts of famous figures (you'll even find a recently freshened-up bust of Franco in the northeastern corner), and bullfights were held here well into the 19th century; the last ceremonial corrida took place here in 1992. Its outdoor tables are a place to linger,…
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Dominican Priory
Originally a Gothic complex founded by King Kazimierz III Wielki in 1342, the Dominican Priory was rebuilt in Renaissance style after it was ravaged by fire in 1575. Two historic highlights inside the church are the Chapel of the Firlej Family (1615), containing family members’ tombstones; and the Tyszkiewicz Chapel (1645–59), with impressive Renaissance stuccowork. For an insight into 18th-century Lublin, note the large historical painting, The Fire of Lublin, which depicts the 1719 fire (in the Szaniawski family chapel to your right as you enter the church). The Dominian Basilica was closed by the Russians in 1886; the monks returned just before the outbreak of WWII…
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Chapel of Metamorfosis Sotiros
At the entrance to the town a sign directs you to the Chapel of Metamorfosis Sotiros that contains 14th-century frescoes. The fresco of the Transfiguration on the south wall is particularly impressive.
The road from Hania to the beginning of the Samaria Gorge is one of the most spectacular routes in Crete. After heading through orange groves to the village of Fournes, a left fork leads to Meskla, twisting and turning along a gorge offering beautiful views. Although the bottom part of the town is not particularly attractive with boarded-up buildings, the road becomes more scenic as it winds uphill to the modern, multicoloured Church of the Panagia. Next to it is a 14th-cen…
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Igreja de São João
The small, fabulous Igreja de São João, which faces the Templo Romano, was founded in 1485 by one Rodrigo Afonso de Melo, count of Olivença and the first governor of Portuguese Tangier, to serve as his family's pantheon. It is still privately owned, by the Duques de Cadaval, and notably well kept.
Behind its elaborate Gothic portal is a nave lined with fantastic floor-to-ceiling azulejos (hand-painted tiles) produced in 1711 by one of Portugal's best-known tile-makers, António de Oliveira Bernardes. The grates in the floor expose a surprising underworld: you can see a deep Moorish cistern that predates the church, and an ossuary full of monks' bones. In the sacristy be…
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Cathedral
Forming the eastern flank of Piazza del Duomo, the cathedral was originally built in 1086 but has since undergone various facelifts. The facade is 16th century, even if the central bronze door is an 1179 original; the interior is a late-20th-century interpretation of what the original must once have looked like. The pulpit is particularly striking, supported by six twisting columns set on marble lions and decorated with flamboyant mosaics of peacocks, birds and dancing lions. Note also how the floor is tilted towards the square – a deliberate measure to enhance the perspective effect. To the right of the central nave, stairs lead down to the cathedral museum and its mod…
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Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola
One of Rome’s most ornate baroque churches, the 17th-century Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola lords it over exquisite Piazza Sant’Ignazio, a small rococo square laid out in 1727 to resemble a stage set. Note the exits into ‘the wings’ at the northern end and how the undulating surfaces create the illusion of a larger space. The church, built by Jesuit architect Orazio Grassi, boasts an imposing Carlo Maderno façade and a celebrated trompe l’oeil ceiling fresco (the ceiling is in fact completely flat) by Andrea Pozzo (1642–1709) depicting St Ignatius Loyola being welcomed into paradise by Christ and the Madonna. To get the best effect, look up from the small yellow spot on…
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Sveti Georgi Rotunda
Regarded as the oldest preserved building in Sofia, the Sveti Georgi Rotunda, in the courtyard between the Sheraton Hotel and the Presidency, dates from the 4th century AD. This circular Roman structure, also known as the Church of St George, was largely rebuilt in the 6th century after being knocked about by invading Huns and in the 16th century was converted into a mosque. It was badly damaged by bombing during WWII and only fully opened to visitors again in 1998 after much restoration.
The murals inside were painted on three layers between the 10th and 14th centuries. Inside the entrance there's a small explanation in English about the church. You're also allowed to wa…
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