Italy may be best known for its epochal cities and dazzling seaside havens, but the country’s hilltop towns and borghi—medieval throwbacks found from the Alpine north to Sicily—also draw throngs of visitors—more than three million trek to San Gimignano alone each year. While the most popular hilltops are in Tuscany and Umbria, you’ll find the most unusual one, Seborga, on the western Italian Riviera, not far from the French border. Yes, Seborga has all the bells and whistles you might expect of an Italian hill town—a palace fortress, cobblestone alleys barely an arm span in width, knock-out views and hyper-local rustic cuisine, but in addition it has a ceremonial head of state who isan elected prince or princess, its own currency, stamps, and national anthem. Seborga’s recent history, unlike that of any other village in Italy, centers on a decades-long quest to become a stand-alone principality, like Monaco, which on clear days, you can see from one of its lookouts.
What you need to know about Dubrovnik, the charming Croatian city where Jeff Bezos parties with his celebrity friends
18.08.2023 - 13:53 / insider.com / Jeff Bezos / What You Need
Jeff Bezos was recently snapped with fiancée Lauren Sanchez, singers Katy Perry and Usher, actor Orlando Bloom, and socialite and influencer Derek Blasberg vacationing in Dubrovnik, a coastal city in Croatia.
The city is known as the "Pearl of the Adriatic." Located close to the southernmost tip of Croatia's Dalmatian coast, it has a population of around 42,000 and is a popular tourist spot, aided partially by its recent use as a filming location for "Game of Thrones."
Travel company TUI says that the city "is enjoying a spell in the limelight at the moment." In June, foreign tourists collectively stayed 524,000 nights in Dubrovnik, making up just over 4% of all nights spent in the country that month by international tourists, according to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.
Dubrovnik's Old Town became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. UNESCO says that the city was an "important Mediterranean sea power" from the 13th century onwards and has an array of preserved Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque churches, monasteries, palaces, and fountains, despite being damaged by an earthquake in 1667 and armed conflict in the 1990s.
Visitors can walk along the city's walls, visit nearby islands, cross over the border to Montenegro or Bosnia and Herzegovina, and sample local wines alongside Dalmatian dishes such as squid salad and pickled cheese. Dubrovnik also has a cable car taking people to the top of a mountain that towers over the city, from which visitors can admire views of its terracotta rootftops, cobbled alleyways, church spires, harbor, and surrounding islands.
Bezos, Sanchez, and friends were spotted strolling around Stradun, the street which runs through the center of the Old Town and is home to a palace, churches, and cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating.
Bezos owns a $500 million, 417-foot superyacht, called Koru, which reports say was docked near Dubrovnik. The vessel had previously sparked a debate about the privilege of the ultra-wealthy when a historic bridge in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, was nearly dismantled so that Koru could pass through.
So far this year, Bezos and Sanchez have also vacationed on the yacht in Spain, Ibiza, and the Italian Riviera.
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