Sights in Europe
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House of Terror
This startling museum is housed in what was once the headquarters of the dreaded ÁVH secret police. The building has a ghastly history, for it was here that many activists of every political persuasion that was out of fashion before and after WWII were taken for interrogation and torture. The walls were apparently double thickness to mute the screams. A plaque on the outside of this house of shame reads in part: ‘We cannot forget the horror of terror, and the victims will always be remembered’.
The museum focuses on the crimes and atrocities committed by both Hungary’s fascist and Stalinist regimes in a permanent exhibition called Double Occupation. But the years…
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Anne Frank Huis
The Anne Frank Huis is the Western Canal Belt’s ubersight, drawing almost a million visitors annually. With its reconstruction of Anne’s melancholy bedroom and her actual diary – sitting alone in its glass case, filled with sunnily optimistic writing tempered by quiet despair – it’s a powerful experience. The focus of the museum is the achterhuis (rear house), also known as the secret annexe, a dark and airless space where the Franks and others observed complete silence during the daytimes, outgrew their clothes, pasted photos of Hollywood stars on the walls and read Dickens, before being mysteriously betrayed and sent to their deaths. The house stays open later…
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Tiergarten
Founded in 1752 as a menagerie by Franz Stephan, the Schönbrunn Tiergarten is the oldest zoo in the world. It houses some 750 animals of all shapes and sizes, including giant pandas that arrived in 2003. A batch of emus, armadillos and baby Siberian tigers joined them in 2006. Thankfully most of the original cramped cages have been updated and improved. The zoo’s layout is reminiscent of a bicycle wheel, with pathways as spokes and an octagonal pavilion at its centre. The pavilion dates from 1759 and was used as the imperial breakfast room. Feeding times are staggered throughout the day – maps on display tell you who’s dining when.
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National Gallery
Gazing grandly over Trafalgar Sq through its Corinthian columns, the National Gallery is the nation's most important repository of art. Four million visitors come annually to admire its 2300-plus Western European paintings, spanning the years 1250 to 1900. Highlights include Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (voted Britain's greatest painting), Botticelli's Venus and Mars and van Gogh's Sunflowers. The medieval religious paintings in the Sainsbury Wing are fascinating, but for a short, sharp blast of brilliance, you can't beat the truckloads of Monets, Cézannes and Renoirs.
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Centre Pompidou
Former French President Georges Pompidou wanted an ultracontemporary artistic hub, and he got it: competition-winning architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers effectively designed the building inside out, with utilitarian features such as plumbing, pipes, air vents and electrical cables forming part of the external façade, freeing up the interior space for exhibitions and events. Paris’ premier cultural centre has amazed visitors since it was inaugurated in 1977.
On the ground floor, the Forum du Centre Pompidou has temporary exhibitions and information desks, while the 4th and 5th floors house the Musée National d’Art Moderne, France’s national collection of art…
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Westminster Abbey
If you're one of those boring sods who boast about spending months in Europe without ever setting foot in a church, get over yourself and make this the exception. Not merely a beautiful place of worship, Westminster Abbey serves up the country's history cold on slabs of stone. For centuries the country's greatest have been interred here, including most of the monarchs from Henry III (died 1272) to George II (1760).
Westminster Abbey has never been a cathedral (the seat of a bishop). It's what is called a 'royal peculiar' and is administered directly by the Crown. Every monarch since William the Conqueror has been crowned here, with the exception of a couple of unlucky Eds…
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Natural History Museum
This mammoth institution is dedicated to the Victorian pursuit of collecting and cataloguing. Walking into the Life galleries (Blue Zone) in the 1880 Gothic Revival building off Cromwell Rd evokes the musty moth-eaten era of the Victorian gentleman scientist. The main museum building, with its blue and sand-coloured brick and terracotta, was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and is as impressive as the towering diplodocus dinosaur skeleton in the Central Hall just ahead of the main entrance. It’s hard to match any of the exhibits with this initial sight, except perhaps the huge blue whale just beyond it. Children, who are the main fans of this museum, are primed for more…
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British Museum
The country's largest museum and one of the oldest and finest in the world, this famous museum boasts vast Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, European and Middle Eastern galleries, among many others.
Begun in 1753 with a 'cabinet of curiosities' bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane to the nation on his death, the collection mushroomed over the ensuing years partly through plundering the empire. The grand Enlightenment Gallery was the first section of the redesigned museum to be built (in 1820).
Among the must-sees are the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, discovered in 1799; the controversial Parthenon Sculptures, stripped from the walls of the…
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Vatican Museums
Visiting the Vatican Museums is an unforgettable experience that requires strength, stamina and patience. You’ll need to be on top of your game to endure the inevitable queues – if not for a ticket then for the security checks – and enjoy what is undoubtedly one of the world’s great museum complexes.
Founded by Pope Julius II in the early 16th century and enlarged by successive pontiffs, the museums are housed in what is known collectively as the Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano. This massive 5.5-hectare complex consists of two palaces – the Vatican palace nearest St Peter’s and the Belvedere Palace – joined by two long galleries. On the inside are three courtyards:…
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Casa Batlló
One of the strangest residential buildings in Europe, this is Gaudí at his hallucinogenic best. The facade, sprinkled with bits of blue, mauve and green tiles and studded with wave-shaped window frames and balconies, rises to an uneven blue-tiled roof with a solitary tower.
It is one of the three houses on the block between Carrer del Consell de Cent and Carrer d’Aragó that gave it the playful name Manzana de la Discordia, meaning ‘Apple (Block) of Discord’. The others are Puig i Cadafalch’s Casa Amatller and Domènech i Montaner’s Casa Lleó Morera. They were all renovated between 1898 and 1906 and show how eclectic a ‘style’ Modernisme was.
Locals know…
reviewed
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Plaza Mayor
For centuries the centrepiece of Madrid life, the stately Plaza Mayor combines supremely elegant architecture with a history dominated by peculiarly Spanish dramas. Pull up a chair at the outdoor tables around the perimeter or laze upon the rough-hewn cobblestones as young madrileños have a habit of doing. All around you, the theatre that is Spanish street life buzzing through the plaza provides a crash course in why people fall in love with Madrid.
Ah, the history the plaza has seen! Designed in 1619 by Juan Gómez de Mora and built in typical Herrerian style, of which the slate spires are the most obvious expression, its first public ceremony was suitably auspicious –…
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Tower Bridge
London was still a thriving port in 1894 when elegant Tower Bridge was built. Designed to be raised to allow ships to pass, electricity has now taken over from the original steam engines. A lift leads up from the northern tower to the overpriced Tower Bridge Exhibition, where the story of its building is recounted within the upper walkway. The same ticket gets you into the engine rooms below the southern tower. Below the bridge on the City side is Dead Man's Hole, where corpses that had made their way into the Thames (through suicide, murder or accident) were regularly retrieved.
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Galleria degli Uffizi
Reason enough to come to Florence, this fabled museum contains quite simply the world’s finest collection of Renaissance art, including both 12th- to 14th-century forebears and 16th- and 17th-century inheritors. Its 50-plus rooms are crammed with more than 1500 works, nearly all of them masterpieces. Part of the museum’s mystique is the difficulties it presents: long lines, crowded galleries, a daunting combination of quantity and quality. There are two tricks to enjoying your experience: pre-book tickets and concentrate on select artists or periods. While signage is less than satisfying, the museum is laid out chronologically, and largely over a single floor. For a…
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Sainte Chapelle
The place to visit on a sunny day! Security checks make it long and snail-slow to get into this gemlike Holy Chapel, the most exquisite of Paris’ Gothic monuments, tucked away within the walls of the Palais de Justice (Law Courts). But once in, be dazzled by Paris’ oldest and finest stained glass – the light on sunny days is extraordinary.
Built in just under three years (compared with nearly 200 for Notre Dame), Ste-Chapelle was consecrated in 1248. The chapel was conceived by Louis IX to house his personal collection of holy relics (including the Holy Crown now kept in the treasury at Notre Dame). The chapel’s exterior can be viewed from across the street from…
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Plitvice Lakes National Park
The extraordinarily beautiful pocket of wooded hills in this World Heritage site enclose 16 turquoise lakes that are connected by waterfalls and cascades. The mineral-rich waters carve through the rock, depositing tufa in continually changing formations. Wooden footbridges follow the rumbling water for an exhilaratingly damp 18km (11mi).
Animal life flourishes in the unspoiled conditions. The stars of the park are bears and wolves, but there are also deer, boar, rabbits, foxes and badgers. There are over 120 different species of bird such as hawks, owls, cuckoos, thrushes, starlings, kingfishers, wild ducks and herons. You might also occasionally see black storks and…
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Parque del Buen Retiro
The glorious gardens of El Retiro are as beautiful as any you’ll find in a European city. Littered with marble monuments, landscaped lawns, the occasional elegant building and abundant greenery, it’s quiet and contemplative during the week but comes to life on weekends. Put simply, this is one of our favourite places in Madrid.
Laid out in the 17th century by Felipe IV as the preserve of kings, queens and their intimates, the park was opened to the public in 1868 and ever since, whenever the weather’s fine and on weekends in particular, madrileños from all across the city gather here to stroll, read the Sunday papers in the shade, take a boat ride or nurse a cool…
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Acropolis
The magnificent Acropolis defines and dominates Athens. Unlike other cities where the main attractions are on the outskirts of town, the sacred rock on which the ancient Greek temples were built rises spectacularly above the centre of the city. The main entrance is from Dionysiou Areopagitou near the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, or from Theorias if you’re coming from Plaka (there’s another entrance near the Kanellopoulos Museum). Large bags must be left at the main entrance cloakroom.
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Astronomical Clock
Ironically, if you wish to tell the time in the Old Town Square, it's easier to look at the clock above this, because this 1490 mechanical marvel is tricky to decipher. The clock's creator, Master Hanuš, was allegedly blinded so he could not duplicate the clock elsewhere, although this is undoubtedly a myth.
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Dance of Colours
This popular two-part performance features a whirling dervish and Sufi music segment followed by dances from 10 different regions of Turkey. Colourful costumes and professional dancers make for a good evening’s fun, with the added bonus that you don’t have to fork out for an indifferent meal.
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Blue Mosque
With his eponymously named mosque, Sultan Ahmet I (r1603–17) set out to build a monument that would rival and even surpass the nearby Aya Sofya in grandeur and beauty. Today it's more widely known as the Blue Mosque.
The mosque's architect, Mehmet Ağa, managed to orchestrate the sort of visual wham-bam effect with the mosque's exterior that Aya Sofya achieved with its interior. Its curves are voluptuous, it has six minarets and the courtyard is the biggest of all of the Ottoman mosques. The interior has a similarly grand scale: the blue tiles that give the building its unofficial name number in the tens of thousands, there are 260 windows and the central prayer space is…
reviewed
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Tate Modern
One of London's most popular attractions, this outstanding modern and contemporary art gallery is housed in the creatively revamped Bankside Power Station south of the Millennium Bridge. A spellbinding synthesis of funky modern art and capacious industrial brick design, the eye-catching result is one of London's must-see sights. Tate Modern has also been extraordinarily successful in bringing challenging work to the masses while a stunning extension is under construction, aiming for a 2016 completion date.
The multimedia guides (£3.50) are worthwhile and there are free 45-minute guided tours of the collection's highlights (Level 3 at 11am and midday; Level 5 at 2pm and…
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Basilica di San Marco
Creating Venice's signature architectural wonder took nearly 800 years of painstaking labour and one saintly barrel of lard. Legend has it that in AD 828, wily Venetian merchants smuggled St Mark's corpse out of Egypt in a barrel of pork fat to avoid inspection by Muslim customs authorities. Church authorities in Rome took a dim view of Venice's tendency to glorify itself and God in the same breath, but Venice defiantly created the basilica in its own cosmopolitan image, with Byzantine onion-bulb domes, a Greek cross layout, a Gothic rosette window and Egyptian marble walls. The roped-off circuit of the church is free and takes about 15 minutes. For entry, dress modestly…
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Basilica Cistern
When those Byzantine emperors built something, they certainly did it properly! This extraordinary cistern, built by Justinian in 532, is a great place to while away half an hour, especially during summer when its cavernous depths stay wonderfully cool.
Like most sites in İstanbul, the cistern has a colourful history. Known in Byzantium as the Basilica Cistern because it lay underneath the Stoa Basilica, one of the great squares on the first hill, it was used to store water for the Great Palace and surrounding buildings. Eventually closed, it seemed to have been forgotten by the city authorities sometime before the Conquest. Enter scholar Petrus Gyllius, who was…
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St Basil’s Cathedral
At the southern end of Red Square, framed by the massive facades of the Kremlin and GUM department store, stands the icon of Russia: St Basil’s Cathedral. This crazy confusion of colours, patterns and shapes is the culmination of a style that is unique to Russian architecture. Before St Basil’s, this style of tent roofs and onion domes had been used to design wooden churches. In 1552 Ivan the Terrible captured the Tatar stronghold of Kazan on the feast of Intercession. He commissioned this landmark church, officially the Intercession Cathedral, to commemorate the victory. From 1555 to 1561 architects Postnik and Barma created this masterpiece that would become the…
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Cave Hill
The best way to get a feel for Belfast's natural setting is to view it from above. In the absence of a private aircraft, head for Cave Hill (368m) which looms over the northern fringes of the city. The view from its summit takes in the whole sprawl of the city, the docks and the creeping fingers of urbanisation along the shores of Belfast Lough. On a clear day you can even spot Scotland lurking on the horizon.
The hill was originally called Ben Madigan, after the 9th-century Ulster king, Matudhain. Its distinctive, craggy profile, seen from the south, has been known to locals for two centuries as 'Napoleon's Nose' - it supposedly bears some resemblance to Bonaparte's…
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