Editorials

Trend

Apia Is Where Robert Louis Stevenson Chose to Die, and Samoa Has Never Stopped Being "Tusitala's" Village

Robert Louis Stevenson spent his last four years above Apia in a mansion called Vailima, and the Samoan capital he wrote about, reached today by only a handful of Pacific flights, still moves at a pace few destinations this photogenic manage to keep.

Trend

Paramaribo Is South America's Most Overlooked Capital, and Its Wooden Skyline Explains Why That's a Mistake

Suriname's capital packs a UNESCO-listed core of Dutch colonial timber architecture, one of the Western Hemisphere's largest wooden cathedrals and a genuinely mixed religious history into a city most South American itineraries skip entirely.

Trend

Dhaka Is Still Sold as a Layover, and Its 400-Year-Old River Quarter Deserves Longer

Most itineraries treat Dhaka as a connection point on the way to Cox's Bazar or the Sundarbans, but the four-century-old river quarter of Old Dhaka, a pink Nawabi palace and one of the busiest waterfronts in South Asia argue for a longer stop.

Trend

Chiloé Doesn't Need Patagonia's Scenery to Be One of Chile's Strangest, Best Islands

An archipelago off southern Chile, known for stilt houses, UNESCO-listed wooden churches and a folklore of ghost ships and horned sea creatures, offers a quieter, stranger alternative to the country's more photographed south.

Trend

Suva Is the Rainy Capital in a Sunny Country, and It's Made a Virtue of the Difference

Most visitors to Fiji fly straight past Suva to the resort islands, missing a genuinely lived-in capital of colonial government buildings, a working port and one of the South Pacific's few real city markets.

Trend

Battambang Turned a French Colonial Grid and a Homemade Railway Into Cambodia's Quiet Arts Town

Cambodia's second city has kept a low-rise French colonial grid along the Sangkae River that Siem Reap and Phnom Penh have largely built over, and paired it with a circus and fine-arts school that has quietly made Battambang the country's most active arts scene outside the capital.

Trend

Podgorica Is Proof the Balkans' Next Boom Won't Look Like Dubrovnik's

While Montenegro's coast fills with cruise-ship day-trippers each summer, the country's low-rise, river-split capital has stayed almost entirely off the same circuit, and that gap is starting to look like the point.

Trend

Bucharest's Old Town Is Quietly Absorbing the Weekend Crowd Budapest Used to Get

Cheap low-cost connections, a restored Lipscani old town and prices still well below Western Europe are turning Bucharest from a Balkan afterthought into a genuine city-break rival to Budapest and Prague.

Trend

Bergamo Is Proving You Don't Need Milan to Fly Into Northern Italy

As Milan Bergamo Airport keeps adding routes, more travellers are booking Bergamo's walled upper town as the destination itself, with Milan as the optional add-on rather than the other way round.

Trend

Manama Keeps Its Pearling-Era Fort a Short Walk From Its Glass Towers

Bahrain's capital is small enough to cross in an afternoon, and unusually for a Gulf city, its pre-oil past, a UNESCO-listed fort, an old souq, pearling harbours, sits within easy reach of its financial-district skyline.

Trend

Vaduz Is Proof That Europe's Smallest Capitals Are Worth the Detour

The capital of Liechtenstein, a country of roughly 40,000 people wedged between Switzerland and Austria, has no railway station, no airport and barely a handful of streets, which is precisely what makes it an odd, worthwhile detour.

Trend

Phnom Penh Puts a Silver-Tiled Royal Palace and a Genocide Memorial Within the Same Afternoon's Reach

Cambodia's capital sits at the confluence of the Mekong, Tonlé Sap and Bassac rivers, pairing a riverside of French colonial buildings and a gilded Royal Palace with the sobering history of Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek.