Itineraries

Lavaux’s 830 hectares of vineyard terraces above Lake Geneva, UNESCO World Heritage since 2007, were first cut by Cistercian monks in the 11th century, benefit from a three-sun microclimate unique in viticulture, and appear on Switzerland’s 200-franc banknote — still producing Chasselas wine by methods continuous with those 900-year-old foundations.

Brimstone Hill Fortress on Saint Kitts, UNESCO World Heritage since 1999, took a century to build using enslaved labour, withstood a month-long French siege in 1782, and remains the best-preserved British colonial military fortification in the Americas — standing alone as the only UNESCO site in the twin-island nation.

Santo Domingo’s Zona Colonial, UNESCO World Heritage since 1990, was founded in 1498 by Bartholomew Columbus and contains the oldest cathedral, oldest fort, and oldest paved street in the Americas — and the urban grid that became the template for every Spanish colonial capital that followed.

Rila Monastery, UNESCO World Heritage since 1983, sits at 1,147 metres in the Bulgarian Rila Mountains — a 10th-century foundation that preserved Bulgarian culture through Ottoman rule, rebuilt in 1833-1837 with 1,200 portico frescoes and a cross carved over 12 years by a monk who lost his sight completing it.

Eight UNESCO-listed wooden Orthodox churches in Maramureș County, northern Romania, combine log-built naves constructed without nails with dramatically tall Gothic spires — the tallest reaching 54 metres at Șurdești — in a living folk tradition where all eight remain active parish churches serving their village communities.

The Madara Rider, a 23-metre bas-relief carved into a northeastern Bulgarian limestone cliff around 705–710 CE by Khan Tervel of the First Bulgarian Empire, is UNESCO-listed since 1979 and unique in Europe as a large-scale medieval rock monument — flanked by Greek inscriptions from three successive Bulgarian khans spanning 705 to 822 CE.

The Citadel of Erbil — UNESCO-listed since 2014 — rises on a 6,000-to-8,000-year-old archaeological tell at the centre of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s capital city, surrounded by active bazaars and housing the Textile Museum, Hammam Museum, and the 12th-century Mudhafaria Minaret below its walls.

The Quebrada de Humahuaca is a 155-kilometre Andean canyon in Jujuy Province, Argentina, continuously inhabited for 10,000 years and UNESCO-listed since 2003 for its mixed cultural and natural values — from the pre-Columbian Pucará de Tilcara and the unique angel soldier paintings of Uquía to the minerally-striated Hill of Seven Colours near Purmamarca.

Old Québec, founded by France in 1608 and inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, is the only walled city remaining in North America north of Mexico — its two quarters straddling a cliff above the Saint Lawrence preserve 17th-century merchants’ stone houses, the oldest stone church on the continent, the site of the 1759 battle that transferred French Canada to British rule, and the iconic Château Frontenac. It lies 250 km northeast of Montréal, 3 hours 20 minutes by train.