Venice is once again on the radar of UNESCO, which has recommended the famous city be added to its list of World Heritage in Danger sites.
21.07.2023 - 07:53 / roughguides.com
Home to a burgeoning café scene and an ever-growing stock of backpacker hostels, the western Ukrainian city of Lviv (Львів) represents the country at its most tourist-friendly. A top pick in Rough Guides' top ten cities for 2014 list, it’s certainly the Ukraine’s biggest surprise, a former outpost of the Habsburg Empire whose elegance and charm will challenge any preconceptions about what eastern Europe or former Soviet cities are supposed to be. So if you’re considering a trip to Europe’s eastern fringes this year, here are ten reasons why Lviv, Ukraine should be on the itinerary.
Lviv’s pedestrian-friendly Old Town still looks and feels like a slice of Central Europe, its welter of Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian churches attesting to a multicultural past. Centre of Lviv’s social life is the spacious Rynok or former market square, abuzz with outdoor cafés and surrounded by Renaissance mansions backed by a warren of courtyards. Nostalgia for the Habsburg era has been put to good use by the booming tourist industry, lending Old-Town nightlife a distinctly theatrical feel: you’ll see top-hatted staff ushering visitors into nineteenth century themed cafés, and frilly-aproned waitresses serving up frothy mugs of beer.
Running along Lviv’s Old Town to the west is Prospekt Svobody (“Freedom Avenue”), a broad two-lane street with a strip of fountain-splashed park running up the middle. Presiding haughtily over the northern end is Lviv Opera House, dating from 1900 and topped with a trio of winged statues symbolizing the arts. To the south, a modern monument to Ukrainian poet Shevchenko and a pre-World War I statue of Polish national bard Adam Mickiewicz point to Lviv’s ambiguous cultural heritage.
Lviv Opera and Ballet Theater, Ukraine © Mazur Travel/Shutterstock
The peaks and pastures of the Carpathians may be a long way from central Lviv, but the lure of the mountains has always exerted a powerful influence over the city’s imagination. Spread over a forested hillside to northeast of the city centre, the Museum of Folk Architecture provides the ideal introduction to the much-cherished rural traditions of the Ukrainian southwest. The most spectacular buildings are the fairytale Carpathian churches, their belfries raised in pagoda-like tiers.
Three kilometres southeast of the centre, Lychakivs’ke Cemetery is one of Europe’s most celebrated burial grounds, park-like in its landscaped beauty and brimming with over two centuries’ worth of fine funerary monuments. Originally laid out in 1786 it is now a museum reserve: indeed the sheer profusion of ornate family chapels, sculpted angels and statues of the deceased gives the place the appearance of an outdoor art gallery.
Old statues on the graves and gravestones in
Venice is once again on the radar of UNESCO, which has recommended the famous city be added to its list of World Heritage in Danger sites.
The 26-country no-border-control Schengen area is in danger of collapsing under the migration threat. Presumably, the new border controls will be for no more than two years. But for now, you have to figure on reverting to the bad old days of mind-numbing border hassles within the area.
Travel website, Trippy, has put together an awesome infographic showing prices for food, beer, taxis, and hotels in the most and least expensive countries. And the best part is that it updates daily, so you can see the average price of something when you’re planning a trip or once you’re in the destination.
Leave the massive crowds of tourists behind in France or Italy, and make your next trip to one of the least-visited European countries.
Top 10 lists are ubiquitous, especially in travel; it seems there’s one for everything. And when it comes to destinations, whether it’s a “most popular” or “up-and-coming” ranking, these lists tend to be a mix of well-known cities and semi-under-the-radar places. Unless you’re a Booking.com user planning 2020 travel, apparently.
Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second city, is the oldest continually inhabited city in Europe. It's also one of the continent’s brightest upcoming stars, and will be a European Capital of Culture in 2019. As well as offering archaeological treasures by the barrow-load, it is one of the most culturally vibrant places in southeastern Europe, with enough cultural festivals, arty neighbourhoods and cool bars to keep today’s urban explorers more than happy.
Eastern Europe has become a popular, mysterious even, destination for the intrepid backpacker. While it’s undoubtedly impressive in its diversity, there are a number of universal lessons that every traveller will learn at some point during their time here.
At the halfway mark of Series One of The Rough Guide to Everywhere (iTunes; Soundcloud), we invited poet-comedian Tim Key to tell us about his gap year in the Ukraine.
Introduced in 2003 as an initiative to support local businesses, “Keep Portland Weird” has fast become Portland’s unofficial motto. Anyone who’s been to the city or watched cult TV show Portlandia will know that the phrase has been taken to heart, and Portland is proud to be, well, a little bit quirky. Here’s why we think it’s one of America’s strangest but greatest cities.
Tim Chester, Web Editor: From the Turner Contemporary gallery to the proliferation of other indie art spaces, retro shops and cute cafés in the Old Town, Margate now offers much more than its beautifully dilapidated seafront. Dubbed “romantic, sexy and weird” by local girl Tracey Emin, this gem on the Isle of Thanet constitutes one of the highlights of the forthcoming Rough Guide to Kent, Sussex and Surrey for many good reasons.
Prepare for an assault on the senses. Southeast Asia has a bellyful of thundering motorbikes, fiery volcanic peaks, seething jungle temples and pungent markets. Yet we also love it for its squeaky-clean sands, barely believable islands and pagodas overlooking lily-topped lotus ponds. From temples to tropical rainforests, here are the top ten places to visit in Southeast Asia – as voted for by you.
There’s so much more to China than the Great Wall, Forbidden City and the Terracotta Army. One of our favourite places to explore is Yunnan province in the south-west of the country, which varies in landscape from tropical lowlands to Himalayan snows. With towering canyons, ethereal rock formations and cities that seem lost in time, there's plenty to capture the imagination – that's why we included it in our Rough Guide to 2019. Here's our must-see Yunnan top ten: