Editorials

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Lecce Is Puglia's Baroque Capital, and Most Itineraries Still Skip It

Puglia's tourist trail tends to stop at Bari, Alberobello and the coast; Lecce, a short train ride south, holds the region's most extraordinary concentration of Baroque architecture and is still comparatively overlooked.

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Quito Is Treated as a Galápagos Layover, and That Undersells One of Latin America's Best-Preserved Old Towns

Ecuador's capital is usually treated as a one-night stop before flights to the Galápagos, but its historic centre, the first place UNESCO named a World Heritage Site, rewards a longer stay on its own terms.

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Montevideo Is the Low-Key Capital Its Beach Neighbour Keeps Overshadowing

Punta del Este gets South America's glamour headlines, but Montevideo, Uruguay's capital and home to two-fifths of the country's population, has an intact colonial old town, a long ocean-facing promenade and a case for staying rather than passing through.

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Naples Is Where Most Amalfi Coast Trips Begin and Almost None of Them Stop

Naples International Airport is the arrival point for most Amalfi Coast, Sorrento and Capri holidays, yet the city itself, with one of Europe's largest historic centres, is treated by most of those travellers as a place to get through rather than a destination.

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Marrakech Gets the Riads; Fez Still Has the Medina Working

Morocco’s tourism boom has concentrated on Marrakech and the coast, leaving Fez’s UNESCO-listed medina, one of the largest car-free urban spaces anywhere, comparatively overlooked despite being arguably more intact.

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Mozambique’s Capital Is Southern Africa’s Most Overlooked City Break

Long overshadowed by safari-focused neighbours, Mozambique’s capital pairs Portuguese-era architecture and jacaranda-lined avenues with a seafood culture and a rebuilt wildlife reserve within a few hours’ drive.

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Central Asia's Quiet Rise Starts in Almaty, Not Astana

Kazakhstan's former capital has ridden a broader wave of curiosity about Central Asia into more travel itineraries, helped by its Silk Road layering and a genuine set of mountains rising directly behind the city.

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Asmara Is the Art Deco Capital Most Travellers Have Never Heard Of

Decades of Italian colonial rule left Eritrea's capital with one of the world's densest collections of 1930s modernist and Art Deco buildings, frozen in place by isolation rather than restoration.

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Tunis Doesn't Get the Credit Its Blue-and-White Neighbour Does

Sidi Bou Said's postcard lanes draw the cameras, but the working medina a short train ride away in Tunis is where Tunisia's layered history, Ottoman, Andalusian and French, is easiest to actually read.

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Baku Is Where the Caucasus Meets the Gulf, and It's Reshaping Fast

Azerbaijan's capital pairs a UNESCO-listed walled old town with a Gulf-style skyline of glass towers, and it has been drawing a steadily wider mix of travellers as regional flight links expand.

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Vilnius Is Baroque Europe's Best-Kept Secret, and It Won't Stay That Way

Lithuania's capital holds one of the largest surviving old towns in Europe and a self-declared arts republic with its own constitution, yet it still rarely makes a first-time Baltic itinerary.

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Lalibela's Rock-Hewn Churches Deserve to Be Ethiopia's Headline Attraction, Not Its Footnote

Eleven churches carved downward out of solid volcanic rock nearly eight centuries ago still function as working places of worship, yet Lalibela remains a detour rather than a destination for most travellers to East Africa.