Nikola Tesla’s father was an Orthodox priest. Nikola was baptised in his father’s church on the day after his birth. And it is at that church, dedicated to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, where crowds now gather to understand more of the life and ...

Let's take time out to visit Thorney Island. But which one? In southern England there are three different islands called Thorney. And we won't need a boat to reach any of ...

With the restoration of Medici rule in Florence in 1512, Niccolò Machiavelli retreated to his family estate in the Tuscan hills. Kirsty Jane Falconer visits the village of Sant’Andrea in Percussina where Machiavelli wrote his best-known book: ...

Kenneth Mackay, the one-time postman in the village of Rhenigidale is long retired. But he is happy to chat to visitors about the life of social isolation and material deprivation which was once the norm in remote villages in the Outer Hebrides. We ...

Labanoras is a beautiful spot, a village in the middle of a forested regional park in eastern Lithuania. It's a place one might so easily miss. There are no great sights, no "must see" distractions. It is a perfect piece of hidden ...

We take the pulse of early evening ceol and craic on the streets of the Irish city of Galway - where a dozen families dominated the mercantile and social life of the city for centuries. These families are often known as the tribes of ...

First there was Brexit and then there was Mouxit - the latter relates to the move by the Swiss municipality of Moutier to secede from Berne Canton and join the Jura. But Mouxit has been cancelled - at least for now. But that won't dampen the ...

These gorgeous summer days are a chance for a change of pace. We look at the recuperative appeal of retreating to the lakes or the ...

Guest contributor Duncan JD Smith conjures up the spirit of an Austro-Hungarian borderland when he visits Burg Bernstein - a fortified country house in the rippled hills of Austria's Burgenland ...

Midway between Madrid and Lisbon, in the Spanish region of Extremadura, lies the ancient town of Trujillo. Guest contributor Laurence Mitchell invites us to join him for a day in the town's central square. The passage of the sun through the ...

The reopening in autumn 2016 of the Koszyki market hall in Warsaw is a reminder that the hip side of the Polish capital is well removed from the districts favoured by tourists. Join us as we stroll down Poznanska to visit the Hala ...

Beside the River Elbe, just downstream from Hamburg, lies the Altes Land. It is one of Europe's most intensive areas of fruit cultivation. Apples, raspberries, cherries and plums aplenty in a region which owes much to early Dutch ...

Discover the extraordinary story of how an Italian village was sacrificed to provide hydro-electric power for Switzerland. The evacuation of Curon Venosta (or Graun-im-Vinschgau in German) was a tragedy. Today the church campanile rises serenely ...

A mock Greek temple on a bluff above the River Danube turns out to be a good spot to reflect on what it means to be German. Walhalla is a national hall of fame - a sort of Bavarian version of the Panthéon in ...

Slovakian Tokaj? Or a sparkling wine from Devon? There are rich rewards awaiting those who leave the main wine routes to discover some of Europe's lesser known ...

The village of Jungholz lies at an altitude of just over 1000 metres in the Alps. At this time of years, the Alpine meadows are full of wild flowers. So Jungholz is a pretty spot. But it is also exceptional in that it is a diamond-shaped piece of ...

We explore an Eden which has its apple orchards, running waters and beautiful gardens. There is even a touch of the East about this unlikely Eden. It is only the minarets that are missing on our journey past the silent monastery of Petra to a ...

Duncan JD Smith, author of 'Only in Budapest', takes to the back streets of the Hungarian capital to visit the latest Budapest fad: a pub in a building that comes close to being a ruin. It's cheap, cheerful and lots of ...

"Cádiz is pretty in a way peculiar to itself." And that's as true today as it was when a traveller penned those words 200 years ago. The most important Atlantic port in Andalucía played a key role in mediating Spain's relationship with the ...

Iain Bamforth, a first-time contributor to hidden europe, wanders through the fruit markets of his home town of Strasbourg and reflects on apples and apricots, persimmons and pomegranates. Join us on a botanical tour of ...

Landscape and architecture combine in a Ligurian valley to make us ponder our own mortality. The cemetery at Armea nicely maps the passage of the dead from personal memory through to collective ...

The North Atlantic island that was once home to Christopher Columbus is a mainstream tourist destination. But that did not stop Europe's media from inventively recreating it as a remote desert island to make a good news ...

Berlin is a city where the locals wear their hearts on their sleeves, a place where solyanka is as common as bratwurst. But what is it that makes the German capital special? The editors of hidden europe reflect on their home ...

The city in northern England is well known for its important role in Anglican affairs, and many visitors also recall York's association with Catholic martyrs. But York has long been home to many dissenting traditions, and the spirit of the ...

The port city of Genoa commanded huge influence on account of its mercantile acumen and its early schemes for the management of public debt, which paved the way for modern banking. Today the city of St George still has the face of ...

hidden europe alights upon a trinity of urban delights: Damme (Belgium), Ribe (Denmark) and Ystad ...

we track down two monuments that claim to mark the spot at the very centre of ...

we warmly recommend a rural spot of studied tranquillity just north of highway E20 from St Petersburg to ...

what's in a name? A lot of tourist euros, if the name has the right ring to it. hidden europe checks out the current fad for branding ...

The Etruscans did it and so did mediaeval Christians. Teeth and toothache have long been stimuli for travel. We explore the current fad for dental tourism, and alight upon Sopron in Hungary and Kobarid in ...

We refresh our wearied and wandering minds in two intriguing gardens. We visit a secret garden in Prague, and hidden europe reader Mervyn Benford reports on a humble Swedish postman who followed in Linnaeus' ...

Tarbet is a spot that is about to be consigned to history. And that's a pity, because Tarbet was a sanctuary - a wee spot that teetered on the edge of being. We report from some of Scotland's remotest ...

There is more to Marne-la-Vallée than Eurodisney. This Paris suburb boasts some remarkable architecture. Forget the rides at Eurodisney! Instead discovery fantasy of another kind in Les Espaces ...

Albert Einstein was once famously reprimanded for allowing weeds to run rampant on his Berlin allotment. hidden europe contrasts two very different allotment cultures in Germany and in ...

'We do not come here to look at the mountains', said the Carthusian monk with a curl of his lip. Yet still the monks of La Grande Chartreuse listen for the cry of the eagle as it soars over Europe's most extraordinary monastic ...

A visit to the showpiece urban developments of the mid-1950s in both halves of Berlin is one of the city's great free attractions. We look at the legacy of the West Berlin 1957 Interbau exhibition and compare it with Karl-Marx-Allee in East ...

Many modern shopping centres are parodies of the elegant glazed arcades that were, in many nineteenth-century European cities, focal points for shopping and relaxation. From Brussels to Milan, Cardiff to Genoa the arcaded gallery became a byword ...

With Eastertide in mind, we explore some devotional itineraries that led to New Jerusalems all over Europe. From Portugal to Poland, sacri monti (sacred mountains or calvaries) often offer very local interpretations of classic religious ...

Expo is back in the news with Milan having just been selected to host the 2015 World Fair. At their best, Expos have served as a boost to imaginative urban regeneration. We look at the Expo legacy in various European ...

Is Tromsø really the Paris of the North? Or does the title more properly belong to St Petersburg? And the Rome of the North: Is that Cologne, Prague or the Glasgow suburb of ...

Berlin's most extraordinary cemetery is tucked away in the northwest corner of the city. It is a place where the Mentzels and Morgensterns rub shoulders with Molokans and Old ...

The Dessau Bauhaus was the creative focus for a galaxy of talented artists, architects and designers, among them Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Mies van der Rohe. We explore the small town of Dessau in eastern ...

The island in Lake Van, shown on modern maps with the name Akdamar, has a more historic name: Akhtamar. The island is rich with Armenian associations, but Turkey has been keen to distance the island from its cultural history. That change of name is ...

The great majority of Europe's citizens will probably not visit a national park in 2009. But for all of us, their very existence is a reassuring reminder that even in a crowded continent there is space to experience wilderness and peace. As Europe ...