Editorials

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Plovdiv Has Quietly Become Europe's Most Interesting Old City

One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe spent decades overlooked in favour of Sofia and the Black Sea coast; a 2019 turn as European Capital of Culture is still paying off.

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Bratislava Is Done Being the Stop You Skip Between Vienna and Budapest

Squeezed on the map between two grander imperial capitals, Slovakia's Danube-side capital has spent years as a day trip; a wave of restored old-town streets and river-facing bars is making the case for staying longer.

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Busan Is the Korean City That Doesn't Need Seoul's Permission to Impress

South Korea's second city is usually pitched as a side trip from Seoul, but its port geography, hillside villages and film-festival culture make a strong case for a visit on its own terms.

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Cusco Was a Capital Long Before It Was a Machu Picchu Layover

Most itineraries treat Cusco as a night or two to acclimatise before Machu Picchu, but the former Inca capital's own streets, built directly over the empire's finest stonework, reward staying longer.

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Antigua Guatemala: A Baroque City Left Half in Ruins, on Purpose

Antigua Guatemala never rebuilt everything the 1773 earthquakes destroyed, and that choice, alongside the volcano that still smokes above it, is exactly what makes it one of Central America's most rewarding slow-travel bases.

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Beirut Keeps Rebuilding Itself, Which Is Exactly Why It's Worth Visiting Now

Few cities have been knocked down and rebuilt as many times as Beirut, and that history of resilience, rather than any single sight, is the real reason to visit.

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Toledo Is Madrid's Easiest Day Trip, and That's Exactly Why It Deserves Longer

Thirty minutes from Madrid by high-speed rail, Toledo is usually squeezed into a single afternoon, but a walled hilltop city that spent centuries as a working capital of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Spain rewards a slower, overnight visit.

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Sarajevo Wears Its History in Plain Sight, and That's Exactly Why It's Having a Moment

Ottoman bazaar, Austro-Hungarian boulevards, a 1984 Olympic legacy and the visible scars of a four-year siege sit within a few streets of each other in Sarajevo, and a growing number of travellers are visiting precisely because none of it has been smoothed over.

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Thessaloniki Is the Greek City That Never Bothered Chasing Santorini's Crowd

Greece's second city carries its Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Sephardic Jewish layers more visibly than almost anywhere else in the country, and has never much bothered competing with Athens or Santorini for attention.

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Salvador da Bahia Is Brazil's Most Overlooked Great City

Brazil's first colonial capital pairs a UNESCO-listed baroque old town with the country's strongest living Afro-Brazilian culture, and gets a fraction of the attention Rio does.

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Kraków Survived Everything Warsaw Didn't, and It Shows

Spared the wartime destruction that flattened Warsaw, Poland's former royal capital kept its medieval core intact and has spent the years since turning it into one of Central Europe's most walkable old towns.

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Ohrid Is Proof the Balkans Still Have a Lake Town Nobody's Ruined Yet

One of Europe's oldest lakes and a rare dual UNESCO listing sit behind a small North Macedonian town that has stayed genuinely quiet even as it climbs more Balkan shortlists.